Insane wood costs of Sylvan buildings

[Cyrox]

Anyone played Sylvan on 1.3 and think so too? Although Sylvan is not my fav town and I dont play it much but I think it is so unfair for Sylvan because they need so much wood now.

I ended up with too much rare resources and money in my game and no wood to upgrade my buildings.

Lack of wood = longer time to get units and upgrades + Sylvan units are little and weak except treants and green dragons

Anyone think so too?

[vhilhu]

+ Sylvan units are little and weak except treants and green dragons

Anyone think so too?

khm. no. id say sylvan is the stongest town in game. (of course except when there are loads of money and you can train haven troops upwards)

and you say green dragons are the ace of the town? what about hunters? druids?

[Cyrox]

+ Sylvan units are little and weak except treants and green dragons

Anyone think so too?

khm. no. id say sylvan is the stongest town in game. (of course except when there are loads of money and you can train haven troops upwards)

and you say green dragons are the ace of the town? what about hunters? druids?

Yea hunters are good...but now...it takes 10 wood to get hunters and 15 wood to get master hunters...its insane. Hunters only have 10 hp btw. They die like flies when enemies target them.

War dancers and their unupgraded counterpart...10 wood for unupgraded and I think 10 wood for upgraded...its crazy..

Alot of the lower tier buildings consume more wood...Sylvan units are good but now I dont even have enough wood to upgrade them.

Treants buildings also got an increase in wood...so its hard to get the tanker when all ur lower tier buildings cost so much wood.

They were fine before and rather powerful..they are still powerful except for the wood thing...it crippled them rather badly.

Little wood and you'll have to deal with comp rushing with upgraded troops up to tier 7 on week 3.

How'd u get so much wood in 3 weeks when everything else (forts, markets, magic guilds) costs wood and on a map with only 1 lumber mill.

[Naskoni]

Well, I haven't played Sylvan in 1.3 but what you describe sounds pretty much what you'd have playing Necro, only this time with stones so I think I can say I know the feeling

My advice - postpone upgrading units for as long as possible - get as many of the basic buildings in place and upgrade later when eventually your wood reserve will start catching up. And milk those windmills - eventually you might get lucky.

If you are truly desperate - trade precious resources and stones for wood if you have such in excess. What can I say - life is hard

[Sir_Toejam]

building resource costs are easy to mod, should whoever you are playing with agree to whatever reductions/changes are proposed.

the current rules (1.3) are contained in the files inside of the p2-data.pak file in this directory:

\GameMechanics\TownBuildingSharedStats

each town has its own directory.

[Bonzer]

And milk those windmills - eventually you might get lucky.

Do H5 windmills give wood now? Never used to on H3. Although I've finished the campaign and maps I can't say I noticed wood from windmills.

Also as I've said in a couple of previous threads, resource availability is up to the individual mapmaker, so when the glut? of fan made maps start to appear, we must hope they are aware of the resources required to build towns up, and balance their availabilty accordingly.

[Sir_Toejam]

Do H5 windmills give wood now?

hmm, you have a point. I've seen the windmills frequently give ore, but i can't recall ever getting wood.

anybody confirm this? Might be just random luck, or selective memory on my part.

[Elvin]

Nope no wood there.Not for some 5-6 games I've played so far

[asandir]

and the damn flotsam doesn't help much either anymore!!

[Sir_Toejam]

hmm, I think I'll start keeping track of the total resources collected information shown at the end of game summary (a nice little adddition with the 1.3 patch).

I'm curious to see, if on average, the resources collected match up well with the cost changes introduced in 1.3.

[PhoenixReborn]

I have to think that the resources costs for ALL the factions has increased.

I know that playing Necro even on normal, it was not easy to upgrade everything. There is a whole thread about how tough it is to upgrade and build the buildings for Academy.

When I played with Inferno in 1.3 I got wrecked by the necromancer. I built devils before succubi and nightmares. Turned out to be a mistake. And pit lords are useless. Bleh.

Anyway my point is that resource costs have gone up for all factions. It will take some playtesting to see which faction is actually in trouble. Alamar, any input?

[Cyrox]

I've played all the factions except Inferno and Haven since 1.3...

For Dungeon and Necropolis on Hard difficulty on the same map, I found it rather easy.

For Dungeon all I needed to upgrade was blood furies in the first few weeks, the rest I could put on hold and the resource changes had no effect on its difficulty whatsoever. Destructive magic also made everything easy.

For Necropolis now it was hard to get the upgrades for the individual units but it was no sweat for me because I had tons and tons of skeleton archers from necronmancy and unupgraded vampires can resurrect themselves and besides all necro heros have raise dead to minimise their loses.

For Sylvan and Academy on Hard difficulty on the same map, I found it rather hard. It was rather easy for me before the patch.

For Academy it was hard to get the archmage upgrade and the Rakshasa Ranis. I got everything else, golems, gargolyes, dijinn sultans, gremlims upgraded but still got trashed by the comp with upgraded units up to tier 7 on week 3.

Now it might be different for someone who is proficient with Sylvan and Academy...Im just stating the difficulties on my part, before and after the patch.

Resource costs might not seem a big hoo-haa when looked at the overall lvl, but zoom in and see which buildings were affected will really affect the overall balance of the factions involved.

[Jolly Joker]

I've written a lot about it in the Academy thread.
1.3 changes things in a way that makes resource management a rather challenging thing. You can't just go ahead and build something, not considering the further resource needs of your town; this is true for all towns, by the way, even for Haven. The main theme here is simply that you don't have the resources to do what you would like (build and upgrade everything that's good and expensive); with the drastically reduced level 7 costs they are an option for timely building.
What that means is, most of the time an upgrade will cost a higher level dwelling (or a mage guild circle).
Now, for Sylvans, forget the upgrade to Master Hunter, for example. A big problem for the Sylvans (something I wrote in the Academy thread already) is the fact that all the "cheap" dwellings like Blacksmith, Market, Level 1 upgrade and so on, that you build to advance the town level, are costing Wood. In short: There is no "cheap" dwelling for the Sylvans, with two notable exceptions: the Stone Ring and the Citadel. (That's why it makes a big difference whether a Sylvan town starts with a Fort or not and basically EVERY dwelling alread built is a help.)
That said, all the other towns will get problems as well

[Killroyan]

I am playing map 1 of dungeon right now on heroic settings and I can tell you it is very hard to build up a castle. You only get 4 weeks of preparing and resources don't come cheap. I just patched the game and I found it very hard to build up even a small army. So I guess it works for most castles right now. I will have to experiment a lot more to see how it works out. After reading JJ's post in the acadamy I already had a feeling that this would be hard for sylvan. In the beta wood was already a problem and since then it has just increased. But I agree with JJ that you now have to start thinking about resource management. Resource silo's all of a sudden made a huge leap in importance.

[asandir]

not for sylvans

[mothersponge]

Interesting thread.

I play Haven alot (almost exclusively) so I really can't comment on the Sylvan issue, but after patch 1.3, resource management is now quite interesting.

I use to upgrade like mad, getting all the main units within at least the first 2 weeks (marksman, squires, peasants and griffons). By third week most of the units were upgraded to their respective levels, along with double growth through fortress upgrades.

But now, it takes a little more brain matter to what I want to build, which I think, is pretty great. Rather than getting all the cool and juicy units, its now become more of a thought-process, where units are now being bought depending on your hero and his/her build.

Decisions like double growth of creature dwellings vs new creature buildings, Uprading Footman to Squires vs buying Archer Tower, are just couple of variables I now need to consider. The market has also become a key building, rather than an upgradable structure for key resources for your ultimate creature (in my case, Arch-Angles).

I think it adds alot more depth and strategic thinking now, rather than the old "Rush" building for better units.

Having a Monk or Knight in your army now gives the feeling of achievement. And having an Angle, well, that's just the cherry on the cake scenario.

Anyhow, just my humble opinion.

[Jolly Joker]

Yes and no. Wood isn't your only concern.
There are a lot of ways to improve the Sylvan situation, depending on what's happening. For one easy access to water helps. You'll have a lot of spare Ore, Sulfur and Mercury and a Trading Post in the vicinity will improve things greatly. In a multplayer game the situation favors trading, especially with Academy, but I think you may be able to make a deal with Dungeon as well - if they speak with each other

[Cyrox]

i've playtested inferno and haven on hard, they are alright(to me), its just now that u needa think when it comes to upgrading stuff.

But for sylvan, I think the resource costs ought to be rebalanced.

I know now u have to make plans for ur building strategy. Like other factions, I think its ok because I just needed to upgrade the key units to help me survive the early weeks and I can leave the rest unupgraded because they're either strong enuff or useless. Like Dungeon, it's blood furies, inferno, it's horned overseer, necronmancer, it's skeleton archers.

But I think the rebalance really made things difficult for Sylvan because war dancers and master hunters need 15 wood each, and 10 wood for the basic building. That means I cant upgrade them for a lonnnngggg time. And the unupgraded versions are really weak(easy to kill). It doesnt help that the treant buildings cost more wood. 15 for base, I dunno for upgraded.

Btw I found out its 15 wood for the building to upgrade to war dancers. not 10.

[Alamar]

In the hotseat testing that I've done pretty much all factions run into resource issues:

Necros need lots of Mercury and 10+ sulfer for Liches is a choke point.

Sylvan needs a TON of wood. Dragons will hit the field before Treants.

Dungeon needs a lot of Crystals for high level buildings. Pray you get walkers guarding Crystal mines or you're in trouble.

Academy costs and challenges are well documented. [Forget racial specials]

Inferno has always been sulfer starved.

Haven requires more resources but I view this faction as the least compromised by the resource changes.

[Jolly Joker]

It simply makes the tried-and-true strategies on higher levels more difficult/impossible. Play a resource-poor map like No Man's Land with the town starting at level 1 on Heroic and you know what I mean. And there is no water and no Trading post either. You simply have to find other ways. When I answered the Academy thread I said, for Sylvans you would have to consider sacrificing something for getting to level 9 (Druids and City Hall). With the Druids there's a bit of a respite and Unicorns are not so hard as well, but finding the right 8 dwellings, seven of which are costing Wood, is rather difficult.
You may be forced to forego the Blade Dancers (or Elves) - but, hey, that's Heroic. It SHOULD be difficult.
Personally I'd think you could reduce the level 2 and their upgrade by 5 Wood each.