Another Faction Bonus Thread

So, I fully disclose that I haven't exactly thought this idea out on a per faction basis, but I think the idea might have some merit.

Gedden has said before that at some point he intends to address the dynamic of Faction/Font bonuses.

My idea, is that when Faction bonuses are on the blotter, what if all bonuses revolved around nora generation?

FS and SP both have been called out for having OP Faction bonuses, almost or more often than KF's +spd. And I doubt anyone has ever seriously considered IS's to be any kind of OP (Unless maybe you're a dirty spell spammer, and no one likes you anyway).

So the idea here is that all Factions would generate nora for different triggers, maybe something flat, or dynamic to their faction flavor.

FS is the easiest, since they're the 'Hippy, one with nora' Faction, they can keep the flat nora per turn bonus, and they can then become the measuring stick on how other factions would produce nora.

SP could return to their flat discount on deploys, since they're the swarm the board with champs faction.

FW could generate nora based on champs dying on the board

UD could generate nora based on damage dealt (Maybe only from melee attacks?)

SL could generate nora based on damage taken? (They are supposedly the tanky faction)

KF? Ranged damage? Spaces moved?

IS could get nora from healing done

ST ....I'm not sure here.

But the point is, as Nora is obviously the most important resource, followed by AP, it would make sense, I think, that as long as any Faction Bonus generated either, that the other factions would be, in some manner, at a disadvantage in comparison.

AP gain from faction/font bonuses I'd rather leave out, as obviously if we turn faction bonuses on their ear, font and even global 'racials' would also have to be addressed accordingly.

Example;

Such as FW (Since I play this mainly). Faction bonus becomes +X% nora gained on champion death (Friendly or both Friendly/Foe, we'd have to see), Well, what about the 60%/30% cooldown reduction?

That gets rolled into Boon of the Undead, and Boon now becomes; When this champion is destroyed, its cooldown is reduced by 60%, it has Immunity: Disease, and is Fearless.

Changed from; This champion is Fearless, has Immunity Disease, 40% poison resistance, and collects 20% more nora from nora globes.

Font bonus...well, my bias says keep it DMZ, since I'm a firm believer that all faction's fonts should fill out with some kind of terrain, and at the moment, DMZ is kind of FW's only inherit terrain type. But its obviously more potent than grass and rock, and arguably on par with snow (In light of Arctic giving ready).

Anyway, that's the idea on paper. Thoughts?

 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

 

I appreciate your constructive feedback on the idea. I should check you off as a supporter? Hard to tell.

 

I'm curious if the current faction bonuses are part of the algorithm.

 

I'll admit ignorance on the issue. I think it's been said that faction bonuses are only considered after the algorithm, but I'm either not looking hard enough or in the wrong threads to find it.

Though I'm not sure why this idea deserves a first response like it did. Whenever faction bonuses pop up, aren't most of the common talking points the disparity between Faction/Font bonus in regards to power? If we set everything on a roughly even playing field, and roll current bonuses into factions where needed, wouldn't that be a benefit?

Tortuns. Isn't it pretty common knowledge that the 'best' way to play them is in a FF KF bg? That +1spd means that much to them, right?

But, whatever. I will bear the brunt of mockery in the hopes that I might help in some fashion at some point.

 

These would have to be very small amounts of nora, or we'd risk overdoing it. If every UD champ generated 5 nora per attack, for example.............It would also increase the disparity between faction bonuses that are clearly stronger and those that are clearly weaker. For example, if FW only generated nora when things died while FS generated nora every turn for nothing, FS would clearly come out ahead in the nora department. KF champs would need to waste AP moving around for nora gen, while SP could get it simply doing what players do every turn: deploying champions.

Nora gen from other sources would also need to be toned way down. Free nora from a FF bonus + a deck with Nora Miners, Banditry, Nora Thief, etc. would be a major pain, not to mention drive up the value of anti-nora gen by leaps and bounds.

 

True, it's not something that could just be slapped on. But it could also be hard capped. Say FS's generation gets raised to 10 a round. 10 nora no matter what, and the other factions could generate up to 15 through their alternate triggers. It would still likely average out to 10 nora per round over the course of a game, but FS would shine as having the up front bonus. FW would gain better returns as the game went on, and SP for example would be able to gain better returns running smaller, cheaper things (Yeah, I know, a buff to moga, like they need it)

 

How about there be no faction bonus and any bonus that may arise come from the amount/type of champs being played

 

- Pretty elegant idea if executed well.

Demonic power- if your battle group has at least x demons your champions gain Y damage.

Dwarven heritage- if your battle group has at least x dwarves your champion take Y less damage from spells.

Etc etc

- Then we can reevaluate font bonuses for each faction and keep them static. Might be too much a bite to take on but would be very interesting to see.

 

I would love to play SL with nora.

 

UD - make more essence capture rune i think that what your trying to do right?
in that case it might work but UD doesn't really have much problem with nora generation it is weak in abilities if we can give something like evasive for 6 turns when deployed i would prefer that more

 

Its cool that you have idea's but balancing this would be hard work and honestly its a bit silly. Nubrons response if quite understandable

 

This is more or less an older idea I've posted before. Since my belief is that how we see Factions currently is flawed. Factions as they are now are simply regional qualifiers. Things that live in the Shattered Peaks, in K'thir Forest, etc. Factions would actually be the racial divides in the regions, at least to an extent. So, in Shattered Peaks, the remaining Cyclops from the Old Empire, the Voil monarchy, Ironfist Stronghold in the Ironfist mountain region, The Inquisition and the barbarians from such.

If it's feasible, and Gedden would have to let us know if it is, I'd much rather see the faction bonuses dissolved and turned into something like this. It would also allow for a more believable set of split battle groups in some cases. Humans show up in a couple of factions, as do elves and a few other crossovers. So you could generate racially or mechanically driven bonuses across faction divides by stacking the right number of units, without stretching the identity of different regions. IS humans could still all be holy and smiting evil demons and such, and FW witches could still be all about curses, but they could find a common bond in just being humans in Poxanthuru.

Same with elves or descendents of elves. KF, UD, and the ST varieties could generate some kind of bonus for all being in the same bg. The possibilities are staggering.

Not so much, but close enough. Nora generation as a whole gets brought up from time to time as a great disparity between factions. Obviously, some produce more, others not so much. One of the biggest problems with Occuli Slag before the revamp was just how much nora it could generate with splitting and the proliferation of Divine Favor and efficient healing from the Bloom. Granted, this idea doesn't fix the disparity between nora gen across factions, but it at least would put them all on somewhat of a level playing field, and then we could look at it inside factions.

And I personally wouldn't mind seeing SL get some kind of nora generation. It might make a transition away from Quickening/DB crutching smoother if there was less of a need for it. Granted, I don't play much SL, but it's always felt like the spells were so vital to secure an advantage before your opponent could create an insurmountable nora advantage. I don't think that SL is properly equipped to handle a huge nora disparity against them. This idea wouldn't necessarily fix that, but it would create a foundation to work towards a proper fix.

And I'll fully admit that maybe nora gen as a regional (Faction) bonus might not be the right step, but creating bonuses that are much more on par with each other can't be anything but a good thing in order to reach a better semblance of balance.

 

there's no such thing as an insurmountable nora advantage when you're playing against db/quickening

 

His initial response to reading the idea I could see as understandable, but actually taking the effort to make the post that he did baffles me in that it isn't understandable. I'm just trying to aim for a more even playing field before we ever drop any pieces on it.

And balance would be shaky at first. Heck, the revamp alone shows that balance isn't all that easy to come by, but we can see that now that most champs are somewhere close to it in terms of paying for what they have, that some bonuses are strikingly more advantageous to have than others. Before when er'thing was OP, the lines between them blurred a bit. That +1spd was a bit harder to tell was there in KF when you could take an Aspect of Violence and just mow down everything in front of it. But balance wouldn't necessarily be that hard. If the nora gen were capped for alternate triggers, you just need to find an average that everyone would be happy with.

Spell resistance in IS was a joke to lich battlegroups, when we in FW could just DR/Altar things down, and feed Vendtta/Serkan insane amounts of damage, and just mow down all the little dwarves we wanted.

Nora may be the wrong approach, but I don't think anyone would disagree with finding some flat ground to stand on, and less of this teeter totter of bonuses we have right now.

Because on paper, and trying to be unbiased, with just a rudimentary understanding of the game from reading the faction overviews and such, you could stack all the bonuses together, and I'm sure a person new to Pox wouldn't have a hard time listing the bonuses in order of impact.

That's all I'm really aiming for

 

so SL is perma nora shielded? except they get 15 nora per hit from champs with 8 base damage?

 

That's quite a bit more skewed than I was aiming for. It would be something more akin to 1 nora per five damage taken by champs, and capping out at 15 per round. So that 8dmg champ would only produce 1 nora for the attack.

1 per 5 damage might even be too low, as it would take an awful long time to get rolling on the 15 possible per round, but those are things that could be adjusted later.

But in essence, yes, that's kind of what would be going on. A Faction wide application of common nora generation abilities, but watered down.

FW would have a lesser version of Death Harvest always active
SL would always have a lesser version of nora shield active
FS would constantly have....well, it would end up being a better nora miner (Maybe, could tie it into flat nora gen per number of champs, it's all malleable right now in an idea phase)
UD gets a lesser version of essence capture constantly active

etc, etc.

And these are my ideas. Maybe it's better for UD to have the lesser nora shield (they are all about inflicting/taking pain), and better for SL to leech nora from making attacks.

It seems counter-intuitive to say don't get hung up on exactly what I'm saying, but that's kind of what I'm getting at. The overarching idea I'm aiming for is some kind of common ground for all factions to stand on while maintaining their flavor. I just think nora gen might be the right course to take. Maybe it's sticking with combat bonuses, but those are boring right?

And it doesn't even have to be unique per faction. It could be counterparts.

IS is all about its martyrs, so IS and FW both could have some kind of lesser nora gen for whenever a friendly unit dies.

SL and ST could both have their nora tied to taking damage. ST is hardier, SL is tougher, right?

KF and UD both could be from dealing damage. UD's sadism vs KF's using natural resources.

 

IS should get trail: hallowed ground and it should work on everything from IS.

 

Sure, why not? FW units could trail desecrated ground. SL could trail sand, there's something there for everyone, right?

All I care about is an even playing field. The bubble probably won't ever line up perfectly between the lines, but if we can get it in there, that would be sublime.

 

I'm starting to think this is a troll thread.

Please stop. Most Bonuses are fine some maybe need looking at but not in the ridiculous way you are suggesting.