In my last post, I concluded that the builder's gameplay needs to be filled with meaningful choices. This primarily concerns how they spend resources rather than how they gather them. The builder can invest resources in either minions or towers, leading to the first non-obvious choice: should resources be spent on towers or minions? In which situation is it more beneficial to develop towers, and in which is it better to enhance minions? Practice has shown that it almost always makes sense to invest in minions, while upgrading towers seems pointless. Let's try to understand why this is the case.
Tower Development
Broadly speaking, investing resources in minions boosts the team's offensive capabilities, while investing in towers enhances the team's defensive capabilities. During our testing, we found that focusing all efforts on offense was necessary, while defense could be neglected. This seems somewhat unnatural. Yes, developing an attack is essential for victory – no one disputes that. But everyone is also accustomed to the idea that good defense is a crucial factor in achieving victory in games. Consider any competitive games: whether strategies, soccer, or even boxing. Completely ignoring defense often leads to defeat. If a boxer only trains their punching power but leaves themselves open, they risk not having the chance to land their powerful punch and might get hit by the opponent's weaker, yet still effective, punch. In soccer, if the entire team rushes to attack the opponent's goal, just a couple of opponents need to bypass the attackers, receive a pass, and they'll have a good chance of scoring with a modest attack.
The situation is similar in strategy games. Suppose players A and B have an equal amount of resources. Player A decides to spend all their resources on building a large army and immediately sends it to attack player B. Player B, however, invests in strong defenses and can withstand player A's assault. Defense is usually cheaper than offense, so to successfully repel the attack, player B might not have to use all their resources, only a portion. After fending off the attack, player B still has resources left to create a small squad of warriors and send them to counterattack player A. This squad might not match the strength of player A's initial army, but it won't face any resistance, as player A's base has no defenses at all. Player B can then destroy the opponent's base and win the battle.
But why doesn't this same logic work in my game? The answer is quite simple – in my game, all battles occur on a single lane. The armies have no opportunity to bypass each other. To reach the opponent's tower, they first need to destroy all the minions in their path. If player A spends all resources on offense, while player B spends some resources on defense, then in each clash, player A's minions will prevail, and their remnants will attack player B's tower. Of course, I am simplifying things greatly. In practice, there are ways to bypass minions and strike the tower, for instance, with the help of champions or controlled minions. However, we were playing 2v2, meaning each team had only one champion, and attacking a tower with just one hero was highly inefficient. It's not that investing resources in towers was entirely pointless – the point of contact between minions doesn't stay in one place all the time. It oscillates throughout the game, sometimes closer to one team's base, sometimes closer to the other team's base. Even if all resources are invested in strengthening minions, there will still be moments when enemy minions approach the tower. So, with careful consideration, it is possible to balance the game so that strengthening towers plays a more significant and justified role. However, remember that we are currently trying to address the problem of meaningful choices regarding resource allocation. At that time, there was no real dilemma about whether to invest in defense or offense – the choice always favored developing the attack, i.e., the minions. While this is not good, it is a separate issue that can be resolved in the future. The truly pressing problem is making the choice of how to invest resources in minions more deliberate and meaningful.
Minion Development
The builder faces three main choices regarding minions:
- Which den to build next?
- What configuration of minions to send in the next wave?
- Which upgrades to enhance?
Let's break down these points.
Which Den to Build Next?
What is the fundamental difference between different minion races? In Force of Nature 2, there were quite a few enemies, so I created many different dens, but the minions within them didn't differ much from each other. The principal differences were only between goblins, rats, mages, and the rest. Goblins are unique in that they are free and available from the start. Rats are also free but significantly stronger than goblins. Mages require obsidian – a resource that is tricky to collect for their development. All other races were very similar to each other. Yes, their dens required different resources, and the minions themselves had slightly different stats. However, they were balanced to be equal in strength, because if one race was stronger than the others, it would render the rest useless. We could remove some dens entirely, but then the builder would quickly finish all the constructions and have nothing left to do.
The first solution to this problem was quite simple: we imposed a limit of a maximum of two units of the same race per wave. This forced builders to use more variety and construct more different dens.
The second solution we came up with was as follows: goblins, rats, and mages remained unchanged, fulfilling their original roles. However, the other races – spiders, skeletons, orcs, and lizards – became rival clans, dealing increased damage to each other in a closed loop. This means: orcs deal double damage to skeletons, skeletons deal double damage to lizards, lizards deal double damage to spiders, and spiders deal double damage to orcs. This way, all races remain equal in strength, but the choice of which den to build next becomes crucial. This creates a unique “rock, paper, scissors” dynamic within the game.
What Configuration of Minions to Send in the Next Wave?
The idea of rival clans partially solves the problem of choosing the specific configuration of the wave. When you have several different races at your disposal, it makes sense to monitor which races the opponent is sending and try to counter with your own. However, we noticed another issue that needed addressing – the low usefulness of melee minions. Like tanks, they move to the front lines of the battle but almost immediately die because, unlike tanks, they have less defense.
Tanks, though dealing significantly less damage, can absorb damage for a while, allowing archers to inflict damage on the enemy. As a result, the common configuration was often 2 tanks + 3 archers instead of the default 1 tank + 2 melee + 2 archers. To make melee minions more useful, we decided to give them unique abilities that could be cast when needed. Both the builder, by possessing a minion and controlling it, and the champion on the lane could cast these abilities. When pressing the Control key, an icon of the spell would appear above the minion’s head. Clicking this icon would cast the minion's ability. It looked like this:
The abilities were as follows:
- Spider Melee Minion: Upon activation, it explodes and poisons all nearby enemies, dealing substantial damage over time but very slowly.
- Skeleton Melee Minion: Provides a significant magical defense boost to all nearby allies for a period of time.
- Orc Melee Minion: Greatly increases its running speed. This made it much more effective at distracting neutral towers and, if needed, catching and finishing off fleeing champions.
- Lizard Melee Minion: Heals all nearby allies.
To avoid making these minion abilities too powerful, each minion carried only a single charge. When a minion used its ability, the charge would be depleted from all nearby allied minions as well. Therefore, there was little benefit in sending a large number of melee minions into a wave just for their spells – only one minion per wave could cast the spell.
Mage abilities also now had charges. Each mage initially had 3 charges of their ability, and these charges were also consumed if any nearby allied minion cast a spell.
Which Upgrades to Enhance?
Previously, upgrades for minions were more significant, as there was less emphasis on which den to build next. It was quite beneficial to fully upgrade minions of one race and rely solely on them. Now, however, with the game requiring the construction of all dens to maintain a broad selection for the next wave, we used upgrades much less frequently. Therefore, at this stage, we decided to leave the upgrades as they were and not make any changes.
Here are the results from testing:
As a bonus, I will also include a demonstration of gameplay with the Warrior champion, as I haven’t showcased it yet:
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