At the moment it feels like specialists are something that could be expanded a bit. What would be nice is to give them an XP/level mechanic based on them doing their job... IE geologist levels up from finding different resources, explorer from doing treasure hunts, etc.
Kind of like skills in individual tasks. For example, consider a geologist: he can go looking for any of a huge number of resources, and they're all the same. What if instead geologists gained skill in finding a particular resource by finding it that let them find it faster later?
For example, take stone. Your geologist starts at 4 minutes to find it... if he finds it a lot, he could slowly "skill up" in stone finding over time until he reduced it by say 50% -- basically over time your normal geologist would approach the effect of a gem geologist in any resource they really work at. But the skill could be on a diminishing returns curve -- getting to say 10% reduction might take only a few 10s of resources but getting to 20% would take 100, 30% take 250, and 50% take a huge amount (1000?). And only in the skill they work on -- finding stone wouldn't help your geologist get better at finding marble, for example.
This has the happy benefit of giving players that sense of being able to achieve in game the same thing they can buy with gems, which is something thats oft requested in "free-to-play" games with cash shops. Furthermore, the gem one will start at max skill to all the resources, making it still quite valuable (especially for the slow-to-discover resources, which would take months if not a year or so to max skill in).
Similar things could be done with explorers -- they could gain skill in the 6 hour, 12 hour, etc. treasure hunt and either reduce the time of that hunt or perhaps give a chance at bonus loot instead (ie at max skill a 50% chance for a second set of loot from that hunt).
Generals would be more tricky, there it could be somewhat like generals in TS7, where they'd gain skill based on the units they use and the units they face (using units = bonus to defense / incoming damage reduction, going against units = bonus to damage / outgoing damage increase) and in general increase the power of the general.
Another option for generals would be specialization: just chose a path for them to work down. Paths could be defense (bonus % HP to units in army or damage reduction), offense (general gains damage and % chance of doing splash damage), ambush (% of the units per stack gain first strike instead of normal), etc.
Obviously not something that's a direct build off what's already in-game, but more of a potential path for expansion of the specialists. Something to give you more of a reason to have more specialists and (when it comes to generals) more of a strategy flavor.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Lordebon
