Capture only damaged buildings?

[Adeimantos]

Would it be possible to make it so buildings can only be captured if they are half damaged or more? I think that would be good for gameplay. I avoid building towers now in multiplayer because it's too easy for enemies to capture them and too hard to get them back.

[Perzival12]

The only problem with that is it means that if you want to capture a building, you have to micromanage the attack. Often times you will look away from your invasion to train more troops or check on your economy, and that means any battering rams or catapults (the only units able to damage buildings quickly) can destroy a building you want to capture before you notice. And, it would be useless to code them so that when a building reaches 1/2 life (or whatever) to just stop attacking or move on. Plenty of historical battles involved surrenders without having to beat the building down, so there is another point.

[Classic-Burger]

1 hour ago, Perzival12 said:

The only problem with that is it means that if you want to capture a building, you have to micromanage the attack. Often times you will look away from your invasion to train more troops or check on your economy, and that means any battering rams or catapults (the only units able to damage buildings quickly) can destroy a building you want to capture before you notice. And, it would be useless to code them so that when a building reaches 1/2 life (or whatever) to just stop attacking or move on. Plenty of historical battles involved surrenders without having to beat the building down, so there is another point.

To make it effective, some other ideas(features) are needed, such as damage from units with torches. Therefore, there would be fire damage, the capture doesn't necessarily need to be 50%, and not necessarily all buildings.

[Perzival12]

6 minutes ago, Classic-Burger said:

To make it effective, some other ideas(features) are needed, such as damage from units with torches. Therefore, there would be fire damage, the capture doesn't necessarily need to be 50%, and not necessarily all buildings.

Hmm. Yeah, I guess Civic Centers at least, maybe barracks and stables (anything military, TBH). Houses should just be capturable flat-out, same with any non-Civil Center civic or economic building. IMO fortresses should not be capturable at all, only destroyed (I know that doesn't really fit with history, but it would make the game more challenging).

[Adeimantos]

The main building I want less capturable is the tower. It's too easy to take a tower in enemy territory and fill it up with units, and too hard to prevent that.

[Grautvornix]

But it is a nice strategic element in decimating a powerful opponent  Also useful is capturing a temple and heal your units, or capture barracks and locally train more forces without the need for long haul troup transport.

[Adeimantos]

30 minutes ago, Grautvornix said:

But it is a nice strategic element in decimating a powerful opponent  Also useful is capturing a temple and heal your units, or capture barracks and locally train more forces without the need for long haul troup transport.

Yes I like capturing in general, it's just that the difficulty of doing it needs to be proportional to the amount of harm it does.

[Atrik]

1 hour ago, Adeimantos said:

Yes I like capturing in general, it's just that the difficulty of doing it needs to be proportional to the amount of harm it does.

A tower cost 200 resources, same as 2 infantry, we'll take account build time and say 3 infantry... Considering this, you can see why building a tower SHOULDNT be too strong as to for the enemy spend excessive time to take it out.

When the building balance is making buildings too strong, then game stalls and it's boring. Which is why this alpha (a27) is refreshing because building are balanced.

We can make the same comparison we did with towers with other buildings like CC and forts both as costly as 9 infantry. Yet a CC even being easier to capture now can score 80 kills as I often witness in games, and forts even more (100 not being uncommon even saw 169 once). 

The towers enemy capture in your own territory, decay 10 capture point/sec iirc, so recapturing them is actually much more at the advantage of the original owner.

Next alpha, CC and forts will be back at being almost impossible to capture, which I regret because it will close strategic options, forcing players to always go for rams, even when you only need to defeat a naked CC. But I guess the majority of people think that's how it should be..

Edited 12 hours ago by Atrik

[Adeimantos]

2 hours ago, Atrik said:

A tower cost 200 resources, same as 2 infantry, we'll take account build time and say 3 infantry... Considering this, you can see why building a tower SHOULDNT be too strong as to for the enemy spend excessive time to take it out.

When the building balance is making buildings too strong, then game stalls and it's boring. Which is why this alpha (a27) is refreshing because building are balanced.

We can make the same comparison we did with towers with other buildings like CC and forts both as costly as 9 infantry. Yet a CC even being easier to capture now can score 80 kills as I often witness in games, and forts even more (100 not being uncommon even saw 169 once). 

The towers enemy capture in your own territory, decay 10 capture point/sec iirc, so recapturing them is actually much more at the advantage of the original owner.

Next alpha, CC and forts will be back at being almost impossible to capture, which I regret because it will close strategic options, forcing players to always go for rams, even when you only need to defeat a naked CC. But I guess the majority of people think that's how it should be..

Towers are not too strong, but a tower full of enemies in your homeland shooting your women after you've just lost most of your troops repelling their invasion is too strong. 

[Atrik]

5 hours ago, Adeimantos said:

Towers are not too strong, but a tower full of enemies in your homeland shooting your women after you've just lost most of your troops repelling their invasion is too strong. 

An enemy already cannot hold a sentry tower in your territory, unless putting hero or champs inside, the tower will decay and return to you.
So basically the only way to please you in this case would be to increase building decay.

In previous alphas, towers with 5 guys inside almost couldn't ever be captured. But that worked both ways. And it was silly. A garrisoned tower in your territory could not be captured unless a very unreasonable effort was made to do so by your opponent, but if ever he did capture it (for example you forgot to garrison it and enemy took it), you would never get it back unless you ram it down first.

Since so much players have a hard time managing to defend their buildings, I would have suggested to do something that increase capture point, instead of capture regeneration. It's very different because increasing capture point is only slowing the capturing of buildings, while capture regeneration have a exponential effect that leads into buildings being not capturable. Here are some ideas as a middle ground:

• Sentry (Tower tech) => +50% arrows and +50% capture points for towers
• Professional Garrison (Fort tech) => +100% arrows and +100% capture points for forts
• CCs 2500 => 3000 base capture points.

I've saw so much capture CC fails this alpha I don't know why some players still think buildings are too easy to capture. It's just different as you need to garrison it with best units and protect your CC more then using it as if it was actually a fort.

 

[Gurken Khan]

30 minutes ago, Atrik said:

An enemy already cannot hold a sentry tower in your territory, unless putting hero or champs inside

As of this version I train my tower guys to elite rank and two of them can hold a building in enemy territory.

[Adeimantos]

3 hours ago, Atrik said:

An enemy already cannot hold a sentry tower in your territory, unless putting hero or champs inside, the tower will decay and return to you.
So basically the only way to please you in this case would be to increase building decay.

In previous alphas, towers with 5 guys inside almost couldn't ever be captured. But that worked both ways. And it was silly. A garrisoned tower in your territory could not be captured unless a very unreasonable effort was made to do so by your opponent, but if ever he did capture it (for example you forgot to garrison it and enemy took it), you would never get it back unless you ram it down first.

Since so much players have a hard time managing to defend their buildings, I would have suggested to do something that increase capture point, instead of capture regeneration. It's very different because increasing capture point is only slowing the capturing of buildings, while capture regeneration have a exponential effect that leads into buildings being not capturable. Here are some ideas as a middle ground:

• Sentry (Tower tech) => +50% arrows and +50% capture points for towers
• Professional Garrison (Fort tech) => +100% arrows and +100% capture points for forts
• CCs 2500 => 3000 base capture points.

I've saw so much capture CC fails this alpha I don't know why some players still think buildings are too easy to capture. It's just different as you need to garrison it with best units and protect your CC more then using it as if it was actually a fort.

 

A couple citizens is enough to hold a tower in enemy territory. Other than that I agree.