Unit Upgrades - Research vs. Scarce Resources

[brettwjohnson]

As a veteran FG-1 player and having gotten thru a little over half the FG-2 campaign...

I find myself really missing the old research mechanic in FG-1... It forced you into some hard choices over having gold to buy new units, upgrade existing units, and open up the upgrade options.

The core mechanic was substantially different, in that in FG-1 your ability to upgrade was dependent on how YOU the player decides to spend gold - and you had 2 levels of choice a) ABILITY to upgrade (how much to devote to research b) CHOICE of what to upgrade. In FG-2, your ABILITY to upgrade is defined by how the DEVELOPERS chose to allocate the scarce resources (note the complaints about how liquid mana is non-existent for the first 1/3 of the campaign).

The original game also had more unit types and each unit type had (IIRC) 6 levels - base + 5 upgrades.

To compare cavalry for instance:
FG-1: Light (skirmish) cavalry + Heavy (shock) cavalry [6 levels for each]
FG-2: Light cavalry (3 types) + Heavy (1 type)

It would have been nice if the upgrade tree had been deeper and (if using the scarce resource model), there had been several levels of upgrade that didn't require scarce resources.

So while I'm still enjoying the game, I definitely find that I miss several of the old FG-1 mechanics (research and customized starting general).

[Arent]

As a veteran FG-1 player and having gotten thru a little over half the FG-2 campaign...

I find myself really missing the old research mechanic in FG-1... It forced you into some hard choices over having gold to buy new units, upgrade existing units, and open up the upgrade options.

The core mechanic was substantially different, in that in FG-1 your ability to upgrade was dependent on how YOU the player decides to spend gold - and you had 2 levels of choice a) ABILITY to upgrade (how much to devote to research b) CHOICE of what to upgrade. In FG-2, your ABILITY to upgrade is defined by how the DEVELOPERS chose to allocate the scarce resources (note the complaints about how liquid mana is non-existent for the first 1/3 of the campaign).

The original game also had more unit types and each unit type had (IIRC) 6 levels - base + 5 upgrades.

To compare cavalry for instance:
FG-1: Light (skirmish) cavalry + Heavy (shock) cavalry [6 levels for each]
FG-2: Light cavalry (3 types) + Heavy (1 type)

It would have been nice if the upgrade tree had been deeper and (if using the scarce resource model), there had been several levels of upgrade that didn't require scarce resources.

So while I'm still enjoying the game, I definitely find that I miss several of the old FG-1 mechanics (research and customized starting general).

What we actually need is a kind of warcamp similar to thronebreaker. You should have the possibility to invest gold and ressources to upgrade your army there: Buy supplies, buy intel before a battle, research certain units, build infrastructure to actually recruit them (stables for cavalry, archery range for archers, troll pens for trolls etc.), find secret blueprints or books for special units (especially the magical ones), upgrade your own hero as warrior, mage or rogue etc.

There is so much you could do with such mechanics. And i really want to point to thronebreaker, where they did it well. I hate their cardgame, but the army management part is good.

[OBG_primetide]

Well, we will add the chance to train units specifically in various areas with the next patch, which will also give you the chance to customize otherwise similar units to a degree.
Regarding the above argument - in FG1 you had 6 levels of unit research, but the vast majority gave you "same but better" and once you locked into a path, you could not change that. Our approach allows you a wider variety of options for a given unit and even branches types of units (like different types of slingers and archers that serve different functions), so I would not compare based on "quantity" of upgrades but also how much they actually allow you to employ different tactics.

[Teppic]

yeah, like this upgrading back then was a no-brainer, now it is something you have to think about...
hmm thinking and gaming I heard that does not match