4x balance

Abstract Base Model:

Exploit: Each city you own generates a unit

• SpawnRate = number of units spawned per turn, usually +1 unit per turn, a city with spawn rate of 0 is a "defense point that cannot spawn units
• Population = max number of units the city can "Hold", usually 9

Exterminate: When armies fight together, the surving army's troops are reduced by the other army capacity = same casualties for both sides. At a simple gameplay you set where the spawned units destinations will be, and they attack enemy cities, until their suicidal attacks manage to capture enemy cities

• Bug: in most 4x games, you can bypass the "same casualties" clause with cheats called "strategic combat" like healing spells, first strike, ranged units, mage spells, summons, leveling up.

Explore: Visualise the map as a graph where each node is a city, edges are the connections between cities. When 2 cities are connected you can transfer an army from a city to another, if it is an allied one, their armies are combined up to population e.x army 3 + army 4 = army 7, if it is an enemy one, the resulting army will be the surviving one with the result subracted, e.x army 3 vs army 4 = -1 = army 1 of p2, since p2 survived he takes over that city.

Expand: Basic gameplay = which cities near me are open for an attack, generate a dikstra network of which cities can be taken over by turn x with the least casualties and most spawnRate = optimization problem

• In this model the map is already explored (visible), therefore finding the optimal solution is trivial
• In constrast 4x games require you to use scouts, to discover the map, a minor setback, since scouts are "free"

Base Model Modifications:

• Fog of war: areas where a scout is not present will hide themself after a time, still this doesn't present a risk, once you know the initial network of nodes and edges, there is minimal alteration in the final strategy.
• Snowball: the game inevitably tips in one's favor at some point because you can capture enemy cities and exploit their power. You can delay the acquisition, to make it fairer, but snowball still exists
• Diplomacy: if a side becomes the strongest the others cooperate against him, it provides a second pillow vs snowball, starting condition: the player has greatest total power, ending condition: the player has total power > all enemy power. Then we fall back to the initial snowball problem
• Enemy Monster Lair: starting role: can you survive the initial starting conditions?
  
  • bug: ending role= cannon fodder xp farm = ineffective because enemy lairs can be destroyed
  • solution: instead we should remodel it to be an unkillable uncapturable self sufficient faction whose cities generate a constant negative spawn rate. The monster lair will wait until it gathers max population, then start spreading and destroying everything in its path in a bfs strategy. To survive a monster lair you must have player.totalSpawnRate > monsterlair.spawnRate. Therefore your only way to defeat a monster lair is to "expand", it is the only thing this faction cannot do, but do expand in a way that doesn't hold another monster lair, because that would be a negative expansion ;)
    [balance: CooperativeMonsterLairs vs IndividualFactions that fight themselves]
• Edge Distance: instead of taking 1 turn to transfer an army between 2 nodes, it can now take variable time, this will help tone down the uncontrollable expansion 
• Instant Combat in Fallen Enchantress: armies had 2 variables :
  • TotalHealth: combined health pool of all units in the army
  • TotalCombatRating: each unit had an individual combat rating calculated from their stats
  battle: you both take turns dealing [TotalCombatRating] damage to each other [TotalHealth] pools, since total health pools were really low, and you played first in instant combat, you usually overpowered your enemy without any casualties = snowballing because it failed to maintain the "same casualties for both sides" golden clause
• Neutral Battle Reward: Battles can act as an exploit/expand element, you gain units by recruiting them to your cause, artifact items that may become as important as cities if they give the proper reward e.x a spawning artifact that generates monsters per x turns, or "faction upgrade" artifacts such as +X max population in that city or +x SpawnRate
• Events: periodically receive a random positive or negative effect, for example if your faction is behind you can alter the ratio of positive/negative effects in order to make the game fairer and allow you catch up to the enemy [negative reinforcement, anti-snowball mechanic]
• Rotting Cities: cities that last for a fixed amount of time before being consumed / vanish into thin air, usually they have high spawn rate and are captured for a temporary military boost
• Uneven Casualties:
  • Amplified Snowballing: 1-sided expansion, no sustainance loss, no way to fight back
• Experience / Levels:
  • Infinite Growth: gameplay is now measured by the rate of expansion, inactivity = loss
  • Secondary Armies: become useless, you must use exactly one army to gain max xp per sec
    solution: heavy xp penaldies for lower enemy levels ~0%
  • Monster lairs: must obtain a "scale up" leveling capacity equal to average player xp gain, you can be outscaled by them = wipe if you don't relocate = wipe anyway since you will be outscaled by others. Fix: relocating a city will allow you to keep its buildings, but not the resources the terrain held
  • Extreme Losses: Losing a high level unit = force restart/load game cheat, needs alternative way to provide units with experience, xp over time (provided by hero's training stat, unit's level is gradually normalised until it finally reaches the hero level), unit training with gold, etc.
  • Scaling: everything should have the capacity to "level", cities with upgrades, units, resources, artifacts, all must scale up or they will be invalidated by the rate of growth
  • Endless Snowball Loop: When one player gains a small advantage over the other, that advantage gives that player an even larger advantage, and so on until the game ends.