Poisonous troop upgrades: the problem and a fix

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Well, I had already suggested this in another thread a couple of days ago, so naturally I'm for it...

 

I say just reduce the cost of troops.

 

@Bear one for your list.

 

The OP has identified a huge problem and suggested a nice workaround. This is indeed a problem in our guild. I just posted about it before seeing this thread.

 

A chill went down my spine last night when I realized with horror an even worse implication of this problem. Even if we can successfully avoid the minefield of skills which will ruin our game if we buy them, that's only the beginning. Someday there will be updates with more skills for existing troops. Existing skills, which were safe to buy before, might become poisonous.

Say we get a level seven academy, and there's some awesome juggernaut ability in there (maybe an activatable ability ). It's not hard to imagine that we may get into the same situation that we currently have with the WDs and HGs, where if you maxed out your early skills you will pay double per troop vs. what you should be paying.

Now I'm afraid to upgrade anything!!! Help, Midoki!

 

@Neckbeard You are not wrong. I've wondered the same thing. There are so many overlapping troop types, new ones could completely invalidate others.

I think Bear added, or will add this to his Build Feature requests Master List. If so, it has my support for moving it up to a high priority.

 

I figured out another possible (easier?) fix. Right now the build time/grog cost of a unit goes up on a table according to how many skills it has, it's "level". That means that the last few upgrades add the most cost, even if they are early on in the tree for that troop. So in my game, that +3 defense seems to add +25k to grog cost, for example.

How about if each skill had its own inherent build time/grog cost? The later skills could have a much higher cost of course. So that early +3 defense on the WD would cost +1k regardless of whether you bought it early on or later. I hesitate as I suggest this, because it would probably make my current troops more expensive. (Maybe lowering the cost at the same time would make everyone happy?) But at least with this approach we wouldn't need to worry that buying a low level skill would screw up our ability to progress later.

 

Interesting thought @Neckbeard although the math isn't quite right there. Each skill for the WD adds 5000, not 25,000. Still steep once you get up to the last few upgrades. You definitely start doing some serious cost/benefit analysis to determine if it's all actually worth it in the end. My idea was a structured addition to cost based on which tier the skill fell under. So every tier one skill adds 1000 grog and say 5 seconds to the cost while tier 2 adds 2500 and 10 seconds, etc.

 

So I say all that really expand on what you meant I hope

 

I see 10,000 for WD upgrades?

 

It must have been increasing incrementally without my paying attention. Likely then the upgrade prices shown don't reflect all levels, just your current

 

It does increase, blindly. As do most other upgrades for other troops. I think I submitted this as a bug, or at least a really dirty trick feature.

 

The higher the upgrade the more cost increases, the last WD upgrade is a 25,000 increase.

 

The last two levels (if that's the right term for the total number of skills) are 25k each for the WD. 50k => 75k and then 75k => 100k.

I'm sort of OK with The Guardian being so expensive, since it is such a big buff. And I'm OK with the later skills being more expensive than the first ones in general. What I think creates a real minefield for the player is the fact that as it's currently set up, effectively the +3 and +5 defense, each cost 25k if they're the last two things you buy. And if you buy either of them, then you are cut off forever from WDs with The Guardian and a unit grog cost of 50k.

The grog/build time could be determined per-skill or per-academy-level, either works. But having it be determined per-total-skill-count, combined with the ballooning costs, creates the situation I'm complaining about here.

 

@Neckbeard I completely agree. I think I've added this to the General Improvements Master List. If not, I will (mental note, @Kelani )

I didn't know the cost boost followed the skill (+5 and +3 being 25k). That's good info.

 

I +1 this as well. Even though I do not have WD yet I would want them to be balanced out and fixed when I do get them.

 

Agree totally with OP. The only reason I upgraded everything was because I didn't know the grog cost would increase to 10k and later 25k. If I had known that I wouldn't have upgraded the +3 early on.

 

So with the update, is this fixed? I can see that my next upgrade is 10k now rather than 25k. Does anyone already know what the total costs are now for level 12 (maxed PH7) and 15 (maxed PH8) witch doctors? I'm still not buying the +3 and +5 defense upgrades until I know if they will cause the same problem as before once I get the PH8 upgrades.

(Related topic: sure would be nice if there was a wiki with up to date information...)

 

I still wish there was an ability to roll back upgrades, but I think with the troop time/cost reductions and the upgraded PC levels (-45% at L3!) If it's not fixed, then it's been made much less severe. Guess we'll have to wait until more people max those skills and see how it goes.

btw, there is a Wiki, but very few people seem to know about it, much less maintain it.

http://plunderpirates.gamepedia.com/Plunder_Pirates_Wiki

 

Indeed, that just doesn't fit the category of "with updated information". I think it was a good experiment for Midoki to leave it to the community to populate it with data. But the experiment has gone on long enough for us to know the answer: no one with enough time on their hands has materialized. Since they presumably have unencrypted text files with all the numbers in them, couldn't someone on the team sit down for an afternoon and type them in?