Stone's Personality & Depletion Concept

One thing Raptor mentioned lately is that stone as a resource has no personality. All others have something special:

Mana: needs no storage
Gold: can only be acquired by trading
Iron: is very expensive (low production speed)
Wood: Has the deforest-Ability

But stone has nothing.

He suggested a depletion concept. There are two variants:

1. Each resource has a limited amount of raw material. e.g. an Iron Mine could have 20 iron. Each time you produce an iron, it is reduced from stock. When the mine is empty, it could no longer produce.
2. The same a 1. but instead of a fixed amount of iron, it is deducted from the mines health. When health reached 0 the is destroyed – of course.

Now Stone could get its personality by having much more health/raw material(stones) than other resources or it could have no depletion at all. What do you think?

It is just an idea,
i would be really happy if somebody has a better one.

I don’t know weather stone needs this kind of personality or not- being the “only default” is a unique characteristic too. And every time I play mana streams I like the concept of charges for resources less. It’s just not fun to have useless cards on the field.
And about loosing hitpoints- that seems to make some cards useless, e.g. ancient woodlands or Arina, the psychik.

It’s just not fun to have useless cards on the field.

You can always raze your field cards if they become useless. We could also have the cards auto-removed when they become empty.

And about loosing hitpoints- that seems to make some cards useless, e.g. ancient woodlands or Arina, the psychik.

We would increase their health in this case.

And about loosing hitpoints- that seems to make some cards useless, e.g. ancient woodlands or Arina, the psychik.

Or the units don’t lose health, just the buildings. The units are already much easier to kill. This could be a benefit to playing a unit, most of which have very low health.

I don’t know weather stone needs this kind of personality or not- being the “only default” is a unique characteristic too.

I agree. I think it is acceptable to not have a personality if someone can’t think of a good personality. Maybe extra health is enough.

another possibility is,
decrease the production speed from 24 to 22 or 20 sec.

It is a small change and dont really change the gameplay.
but
if stone is the fastest res to produce, it is the best “to trade” res.
this means, that you can sell it really fast for gold.

pure wood/gold decks can now involve some stone quarries to produce faster gold than with forests.
in the late game you will get a gold-advantage.

this will increase the personality of stone.

I think this change would change the game play quite a bit. I think I would give resources diminishing returns instead of stone an increasing return. I actually like the idea of all resources having some kind of depletion or diminishing returns. Without some kind of change, there aren’t many options for new resource cards. For example…

Iron Mine 0/1/12
36 sec, gain 1 iron

There’s not a lot more that you can do here except change the production time and stats (x/x/x) unless you start creating resource cards with abilities.

Diminishing Returns

With diminishing returns, production time increases by 1 or 2 seconds and stone could have very low or no diminishing returns. Here’s a few examples…

Forest
0/0/16
Lumber – 24 sec: Gain 1 wood.
Depletion – 1 sec.
Depletion times – 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 34, etc.

Ancient Woodland
0/0/8
Lumber – 20 sec: Gain 1 wood.
Depletion – 2 sec.
Depletion times – 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36, etc.

Copius Thicket 3 wood
Lumber – 12 sec: Gain 1 wood.
Depletion – 1 sec.
Depletion times – 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, etc.

I made a slight change to the basic stats of Ancient Woodland for this example.

You could also include depletion. Depletion doesn’t have to lead to the extinction of the resource supply, it could be a depletion to the production rate instead. While this might sound complicated in comparison to the current resource system, it is actually a very simple concept that I don’t think anyone would have trouble picking up. Each resource has a starting amount and once you use the resources starting supply, depletion begins and you start to see diminishing returns. This actually makes sense in real life too. Imaging iron mining, at first iron is easy to find, but after depleting the mine for a while, it becomes tougher to find or takes longer because you have to dig deeper.

Here’s an example of what I mean…

Forest
0/0/16
Lumber – 24 sec: Gain 1 wood.
Starting quantity – 5
Depletion – 3 sec.
Production times – 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 27, 30, 33, 36, 39, etc.

Ancient Woodland
0/0/8
Lumber – 24 sec: Gain 1 wood.
Starting quantity – 3
Depletion – 2 sec.
Depletion times – 24, 24, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36, 38, etc.

New Wood Resource
0/0/6
Lumber – 18 sec: Gain 1 wood.
Starting quantity – 2
Depletion – 3 sec.
Depletion times – 18, 18, 21, 24, 27, 30, 33, 36, 39, 42, etc.

Players would choose different resources depending on their deck and timing of their demand. If you find that you don’t need a lot of wood up front, but will use a lot in the long run, you might choose Ancient Woodland over Forest.

If you want more wood up front for a woodlands rush deck, you might go with New Wood Resource. Also, if you need just a little bit of wood to get started, this might be the way to go too.

You could then give each stone resource the characteristic of higher starting quantities and/or slower depletion times. For example…

Stone Quarry
0/0/24
Quarry – 24 sec: Gain 1 stone.
Starting quantity – 4
Depletion – 1 sec.
Depletion times – 24, 24, 24, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, etc.

New Stone Resource
0/0/18
Quarry – 24 sec: Gain 1 stone.
Starting quantity – 8
Depletion – 3 sec.
Depletion times – 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 27, 30 etc.

I dont like that Diminishing Returns should be a “default” feature.
Easy do get, but never to handle. So it is really unimortant.
And in the late game you will find out a slow gameplay because the Dimishing Returns is to high.
But maybe we can create some cards with this ability.

just my 2 cents

so stone will stay like it is.

Depletion Concept
I think neither depletion nor diminishing returns should be default.

1. Like raptor said, diminishing returns would slow down the endgame for everyone.
2. Depletion might introduce a similar problem Magic the Gathering has. If all (or most) resource cards have depletion you have to draw additional resource cards later in the game, when you run out of stock. If you got bad luck, you dont draw any and become stalled – not much fun. Its too much based on luck.

We could of course create some special cards with these abilities.

Stone Personality
I think the personality of stone should be, that stone has a bit more health than other resources.

That’s said, like Psyclone already mentioned, the health of most resources is too high. They shouldnt be used as walls – that’s what walls are for :)

I would suggest we lower the health of most resources – not by too much. And stone would be the only resource that could possibly be used as a weak wall replacement, with the addition of Magic Rock maybe. The health shouldnt be too low either, so resources arent a prime target for any attacking army.

I think It would also make sense that stone quarries are better blockers than a forests or a mine – there are mountains in your way, possibly with defenders everywhere.

Resource Card-Type
With this done – we could give resources their own card type resource. This makes more sense than e.g. a forest being a building. This would render them immune to anti-building spells and make them harder targets for building-attackers – but this shouldnt be a problem when they have lower health.

see also http://www.fantasy-cards.net/forums/3/topics/124

Stone has already the biggest health,

we cant realy reduce the health of the other res-cards.

Iron Mine has 12, if we reduce them to 10, a singel fireball can destroy it.

hmm

Maybe Fireball should be “only unit”

Iron Mine has 12, if we reduce them to 10, a singel fireball can destroy it.

it won’t if Iron Mine is just a resource instead of a building.

it won’t if Iron Mine is just a resource instead of a building.

I think this would make sense for the lore and at the same time solve a lot of tagging issues.

You could still have a couple rare buildings produce resources, etc.

For example…

Woodcutter’s Hut/Lumber Mill
2 wood
0/0/20

Lumber – 48 sec: Produce 1 wood

When Woodcutter’s Hut/Lumber Mill is in play, all other wood resource production times are decreased by 3 seconds or 15%. (I realize this is not codeable yet)

So in the example above, if a player had a Forest, Ancient Woodlands and Woodcutter’s Hut/Lumber Mill in play, then the Forest’s and Ancient Woodlands’ wood production rate would decrease from 24 seconds to 21 seconds (3 second decrease) or 20.2 seconds (15% decrease).

Maybe Fireball should be “only unit”

It could be “any unit or building” and it would avoid targeting resources.

Im really unsure about the Resource Card-Type.
Also i cant really choose one way…