Insane Difficulty: Class Promotion List - Insane Difficulty

Thanks very much! Are these the values in the current patch or the expected values in the next patch?

The only < lv 10 values that aren't in the current patch is Wildman and Ninja currently require 0-49 Ali instead of 0-50 Ali. Any of the lv 10+ values will be patched in before they are relevant.

Oh, I forgot to mention, but obviously I haven't chosen requirements for all the new final tier promotions yet. You can generally expect them to be at least as stringent as the previous tier's requirements.

Thinking of items, like Regal Crown, Blood Moon, Vampire Ring, etc.?

Anyway, maybe you could merge the ALI req's for the 2nd Dragons, like 0-49 for Black, 51+ for Silver, 35-65 for Red. 35 is pretty much impossible at lv 7 without Neutral farming, especially for a large unit that can't swap over between units easily. I was also thinking that without a unit actually killing someone, they could just have a small percentage to gravitate towards the middle of their ALI range. Like an ALI predisposition. e.g. a Witch by just being a Witch in a battle has a small chance of gaining or losing a point towards 30ish ALI.

Fidelity, on 22 May 2015 - 03:21 PM, said:

For the Queen, Raksasha, and Nosferatu promotions? Nah. They'll just have level-based promotions.

Fidelity, on 22 May 2015 - 03:21 PM, said:

Hmm... they could probably stand to be adjusted some, yeah. Maybe not quite as generous as 0-49 and 51-100, but something closer to 50 than 35 and 65.

Actually now that I think about it, Silver Dragon probably doesn't really need any tweaking, or maybe just to 60, if anything. Makes sense that a Dragon should be Gooder than normal to go Silver. I was really just concerned about the Black Dragon anyway.

I think it is only a problem for the first promotion tier for dragons - it's just hard to get to 35/65 before level 7. After that, the only problems I have had are keeping red dragons neutral, which is not too hard if you pay attention.

This looks very promising & I love the easy to read format.

Hope to have more time to play soon!

Yeah, Red Dragons have a different problem entirely. Getting one is the easiest, it's keeping them red and promotable that's the problem. I hate plotting them away from kills and taking them out of bully units.

Fidelity, on 22 May 2015 - 11:28 PM, said:

Because you don't have to care about a dragon's charisma, you really only have to worry about going too evil. You can always beat up low level neutral enemies when it's promotion time if your alignment is too high. Dragoners have it a lot worse. But yeah, I have no issue with making the requires for the first tier of dragons way more relaxed.

Far Horizon, on 22 May 2015 - 09:30 PM, said:

Good to hear from ya! I'd definitely be into having some more stage vids to watch. I've had an abundance of real life interference coupled with a lacking period of motivation, myself. But I seem to be coming out of it now, and I have a 3-day weekend to get things back on track.

Good evening Gentlemen. Really enjoying my play-through, and finding things like this list very helpful in terms of unit creation. I'm actually having a fairly difficult time getting through each map. Not really interested in powering through, i want to make a balanced army. I'm in antalia.

I was just curious, I noticed a few classes listed here may be non existent. As an example, the dragoner seems to only have one class so far in game. I'm not sure if a lot of these classes are still in the plan process or what. Not complaining or anything. Just an advocate of transparency and accuracy. I love the new designs, just curious which ones are playable though.

If you're playing the version of this hack that's available for download on the Downloads page (which it sounds like you are, based on being in Antalia) then Dragoner and Dragon Master are in the game, but no Dragoness yet. The one available for download in this forum is an in-development version that only currently has 4 stages. Everything in these forums within the last year or so is about the in-development version, so I'm afraid you'd have to do some digging through this forum to get information that applies to the last full version (from the Downloads page).

Hey man, love the work. I love this game, and you have given it a second life for me.

Just a quick suggestion: Can you add more crossover uses for class upgrade items? This can happen two different ways, which are already seen in the vanilla game:
1. The Undead Ring can be used on a Sorcerer to make a Lich, and it can also be used on a Tiamat to make a Zombie Dragon. Perhaps you could add additional items uses. For example, a Stone of Dragos could also promote a Red Dragon II to a Salamand. You could continue the dragon theme with a Crown (or a Blood, I guess) could turn a Gold Dragon into a Platinum Dragon.
2. The Blood can be used on an Evil One or a Knight to make a Vampere. Maybe a Staff could be used on a Doll Mage and/or a Muse and/or Mage and/or Witch. Also, you could use a palette swapped lich for the Sorcerer and make a sub-class. (P.S. Evil Ones are the tier equivalents to Paladins. The classes that can use the Blood are asymmetrical in class-tier. If you could fix that... Sorry, I'm just a little anal.)

I just hate it when I have extra Bloods and Stones. I like the item-to-access-new-class-tree aspect of the game, and I would like to see it better implemented. I apologize if these suggestions are overly difficult to program, as I am mostly ignorant about that whole side of things. I am just a fan.

Thanks again!

Thinking about ALI and CHA.

I think this is a cool aspect of the game. It makes you feel invested in units when you carefully mold them into the right stats. The effort required is part of the reward. However, the effort itself is boring as hell. I enter a map, deploy a very carefully built unit that is pathetic enough to ensure my character to get the last hit. I fly back and forth over the map until I get a neutral encounter and pray that things work out. I don't mind grinding, but does the grinding need to completely suck?

Now you have removed a big part of goth income so long term map revisits are even more costly. This sounds like a potential nightmare for altering my army.

So, ALI: Your idea for ALI weapons is interesting. However, this will effectively remove the map revisits for grinding from the game. Maybe that is a good idea. I dunno.

An alternative idea: Make ALI completely dependent on map revisits and make map revisits more exciting. I don't know how much control you have over neutral encounters. If you can make powerful groups of enemies that could not be recruited (or maybe not all of them) then you could use them for ALI modifications. If you could put neutral encounters in set locations then you could even include neutral "boss" style encounters that could be themed for the appropriate ALI change.

Okay CHA: I think this should be made more distinct from ALI. I don't like how it plays a role in class progression. I understand the logic, but I don't think it works out well. What if you took it out of class progression but improved it for other interesting things? I don't know for sure that the CHA of a leader influences the growth of the units in his party, but my own anecdotal evidence says it does. That is an interesting influence for a stat to have. Here is an idea: make CHA more immutable in general and relative to the character class (if that's possible). You can change CHA but only in progression battles somehow and not in map revisits. Maybe finishing off whole units decreases CHA and killing leaders increases CHA. Add in some kind of modifier for level difference and you have a stat that can only really be significantly changed through careful tactics.

Another comment about CHA: I don't like that you increased the CHA penalty for retreating. Hit-and-Run is a valid tactic in any possible world. Robin Hood would be a high CHA unit that used hit-and-run tactics. There must be some other way to penalize retreat that also respects the tactical use of retreat.

So the full picture of character building as far as ALI and CHA: During progression battles you carefully cycle your units and even leaders in order to get high CHA. This causes better growth for the characters in the units with high CHA leaders. This just leaves grinding your ALI in order to make the units that you want. You go to a revisit and fight the neutral bosses with strong units in order to change their ALI. Just as an aside, in Tactics Ogre they use the other stats to determine class progression (i.e. STR, AGI, INT). This could work for OB, especially if class upgrade items ignored the requirements.

There are a number of sloppy details I don't have yet. For example, should neutral bosses give experience and items? What is the relationship between ALI and level? How do you determine ALI change from neutral bosses? What else does CHA do? Is there any benefit for a low CHA unit?

Once again, these are just suggestions from a fan who doesn't know how hard all of this must be. Please forgive me if I say something crazy.

Sophist, on 14 May 2016 - 03:23 PM, said:

Wait, why is revisiting maps more costly? Why is it even costly at all?

Sophist, on 14 May 2016 - 03:23 PM, said:

I think it is.

Sophist, on 14 May 2016 - 03:23 PM, said:

Wait, so, stage battles wouldn't alter Ali? I dunno about that one... making neutrals more interesting is something I want to get around to at some point, but I'll likely prioritize getting a complete version of the game out first.

Sophist, on 14 May 2016 - 03:23 PM, said:

It doesn't. Although in this hack your leader's Cha does affect their minions' stats.

Sophist, on 14 May 2016 - 03:23 PM, said:

Heh, not a very convincing analogy since Robin Hood is noteworthy primarily for being an exception to the rule: people usually hate thieves and bandits, but Robin Hood transcends that generalization. If I get a better system for limiting retreats (which is very likely to happen), then the Cha penalty will probably go back to normal.

Sophist, on 14 May 2016 - 03:23 PM, said:

I don't really like that system. But altering the way Cha and Ali work is a possibility... though I'm not convinced it's necessary. Cha is generally raised by being underlevel, which makes it more difficult (though certainly not impossible) to farm than Ali is. It also doesn't have Ali's property where high values tend to stay high and low values tend to stay low, so becoming overlevel will drop your Cha even if you maxed it out earlier. Ali isn't altered in a terribly interesting way in the original, which is why I want to introduce better ways to control it.

From my limited experience with this patch, I think Zombero's methods are pretty good. If the overall changes to the game reduce reliance on neutral encounters I'd say that's a feature rather than a bug. I feel like the heart of the game is managing the growth of your characters while struggling to win the story maps. That kind of divide in goals is what can make these games interesting, and i think the game would lose something if things like ALI were handled only in map revisits.

Retreat was a pretty easy thing to abuse in old Ogre Battle. The new restrictions and penalties force more emphasis on wise (frequent) tarot card use when the battle looks rough. I like this change; tarots strike me as being critical to the battle system since it's the only way to directly control what happens other than ending the battle early. The retreat penalties also emphasize in-battle healing to avoid characters getting killed in one encounter. Whether that's good or bad is not something I'm ready to tackle, it seems like a matter of opinion to me.

Also hello again. I've mostly been playing classic XCOM with Final Mod recently but I'm looking forward to seeing what's in store for us on the Ogre Battle side of things.