The problem with tower wars

[The problem with tower wars]

Karawasa,

I gave it some more thought, and I think the main problem, related to income, is that sometimes nobody sends a creep to a particular player, making it difficult to get income.

It gets worse, of course, when it happens to a neophite who doesn't have any minerals at all and ends up feeling frustrated/bored.

I think that RATHER THAN directly giving players a steady income, it would be better to automatically ensure that they have a fresh supply of creeps all the time which they can kill for income.

If I were writing it myself, I think I'd do something like this:

1. Set up an interval time of about 20 seconds.

2. Add up the total mineral cost spent on creeps sent

to each player during that period per player

(Hereafter "creep-dollars per player" or "CDPP")

Include the duplicate set of creeps a player sends

to themselves in this number.

So if Bob sends ten $30 creeps to Jane,

that's $300 of creeps to Bob

and $300 of creeps to Jane.

3. Decide how much money the CPU should spend on

CPU-generated-creeps compared to player-paid-for-creeps.

(I'll use "CCB" later to refer to the "CPU Creep Budget".)

I think dividing the "total creep-dollars" by three

would be a good CCB.

4. Distribute the CCB among the players according to how

many creep-dollars were sent to them, giving people who

didn't get any most of the CCB.

So basically:

        foreach_human_player() {

            # See how much of the CPU Creep Budget 

            # should be spent on this player

            AvgCD = Total (CPPP);

            set hisCCB = CCB * 

                ( 1 - (CD_sent_to_this_player / AvgCD) );

            # Figure out what creeps to buy with it.

            If (hisCCB <=0) continue;

            If ( CCB < (FruitPrice) {

              NumberofCreeps = Random(1,5,10,15,or 30);

              CreepColor = Random(6-elements or composite);

              CreepType = MostExpensiveCreepType(CreepColor, 

                 (thisplayersCCB/NumberofCreeps)+0.5);  

                 # (sometimes round up)

            } else { # It's Fruit time

              CreepType=Fruit;

              CreepColor = Fruit;

              NumberofCreeps = hisCCB/FruitPrice;

              }

        }

Related idea:

In addition to the above, you might want to have the CPU start sending Extra-CPU-Fruit (ECF) to everyone if the game goes on too long.

I know you said that the fruit that players send to each other ought to break any stalemate; I haven't gotten that far before winning or losing (usually winning) so I'm not sure.

But fruit-at-the-end is just a failsafe idea, so if the players do in-fact kill each other, they'll never see the ECF anyways. And besides, it should be much easier to program:

if(gametime > toolong ) call(WhateverMakesFruitInTDMode)

- wwwIdotLA

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