(8) Stand of the Peons [Pre-1.24]

[GaDDeN]

Description: Build burrows and load your peons to defend yourself from 30 waves of attackers. This is not a td; the attackers try to destroy every single burrow and peon before they attack the peon stronghold you try to defend. As the burrows take damage during the attacks, your must use your loaded peons to repair.

The basic idea of this game is something i call "peon-micro". When a burrow is damaged, you must unload peons to repair. But the attackers will often switch target to attack these peons. Then you have to load the damaged peons and switch them for healthier peons inside the burrow. Unlike other defense games, your micro plays a big part in your success.

The burrows you build are, of course, not normal orc burrows. There are many different burrows, with different space for loading peons. Many burrows gain special abilities depending on the amount of peons loaded. For example, the "Crypt Burrow" has a multi-shot attack that gains one additional target for each peon loaded. Using the peons loaded in this burrow to repair might be a mistake, since you loose alot of extra attack power.

When a player dies, he can either leave or stay to "raid" the enemy players. A dead player can raid about every 2 minutes. This ability sends some of the unit types that are in the current wave toward a random player. These units are under the dead player's control and will be much harder to defeat, because players have much better micro than the computer controlled attackers.

For those interested, NOONE has reached level 30 yet. All players that survive level 30 will be added to my hall of fame :)

Things i'm planning to add in the future:

* Boss levels. And no, i don't mean a wave with only one strong creep. Boss levels in stand of the peons would mean a wave with triggered AI. Maybe 4 large acolytes that will ressurect the others when they die, if you don't kill all four within a time frame of maybe 5 seconds. Other bosses could be an invulnerable necromancer that only becomes vulnerable if you manage to kill ALL his summoned units (which he summons all the time), which will only happen when he runs out of mana.

* More "dead-player-support". The current raid-system is quite unbalanced since it sends units toward a random player, it's really just added to give the observers something to do.

* More PVP (player vs player) stuff. Perhaps a mortar burrow with long cooldown that fires a shell toward enemy player's fortifications. Or a "peon-raid" that living players can send toward other living players. You can of course play this map single player and try to survive as many waves as possible, but i prefer player vs player maps.


I'm not sure if im allowed to submit more than one map (Elimination is allready in the section) but i'll give it a shot.

[Anitarf]

You know I love this map, it gets my approval as-is. An interesting and original concept (there were burrow-defense maps before, but I recall none where you would have to micro like this), and a good execution, the map has what it takes.

As for further suggestions, I mainly have balance issues to adress. Like, for example, the hp upgrade on burrows is still rather expensive/inefficient. Spending 500 gold for a 20% increase (at best) seems too much, especially since I can get a roughly 35% attack damage upgrade on the towers for the same ammount of gold. I know, you can specialize the bunkers for tanking, in that case the upgrade is powerful, but you have to repair them at some point, and then the enemies go after the repairing peon, and once you hide him, they're all over your base, hitting the weak towers as well.

Oh, and the raids, they are really imbalanced. They can make the game easy if the raiders feed the defenders (although, I'm not sure the player raids give bounty) or impossible if the raiders attack together with the main wave. Although I agree that it's nice that you give defeated players something to do to keep them in the game, giving them the power of life-or-death over other players seems like a bit much. Maybe an interesting idea would be that they get enslaved like the story says, but as slaves they play some sort of minigame where they can do minor sabotagues to the waves that share a race with the one that enslaved them. For example, if a player looses to a human wave, he is now their slave, and all their future waves get a unit or two more, but if the player does good on his minigame(s), ha can cancle this bonus, and if he does excelent, he can even achieve that the next human waves get one or two units less; in either case, the difference they make shouldn't be too big.

Now, when I say minigames, it may sound like uther party, but it doesnt have to be, it could be anything, best if something appropriate to the theme and with similar gameplay - micromanaging peons.

[Blade.dk]

It was a really nice and new idea that this map was made on, and I really liked it.

My only (small) critic is, that sometimes the gameplay seemed a bit slow, could be a bit faster maybe, imo.

Anyways, it was well made, interesting and new, so it gets my approval.

[Azazel_]

I played this map with my friends. It is interesting and simple.

[iNfraNe]

Not that my approval matters anymore (since its.. 1 admin and 2 mods right?), but who cares, im writing a report anyway.

This map is original, at first I thought you made just another maze td, but this is certainly alot different. It not just the "skill" to build the right towers (burrows) at the right time, but this needs alot of micro during waves, I really like it, its new (for me at least).

I also like that the burrows are different in size, it makes it harder to maze good, which might be a - for someone, but since it makes it harder, a + for me. The more skill a game needs the better.

Also its good that the waves dont consist of the same units each wave (like.. wave 1: ghouls, wave 2: footmen, etc) but a mixed army.

I agree with ani what should be improved, but I approve in the current state too.

[GaDDeN]

Yes the upgrades are generally stupid imo. What they do is encourage you to build more of the same burrow, and this is deffinately not a thing i want. Except for the upgrades, building a variety of burrows is usually the best strategy. Therefor, upgrades will probably be removed OR changed into single-burrow upgrades (meaning you upgrade for only the burrow selected, not all of that type).

[Tim.]

Exactly what I was about to say, GaDDeN.

Well Anitraf basically covered everything I wanted to say other than two small bugs and an opinion.

• Spelling mistake in the Quest Log, "Allways" instead of "Always"
• "Blade.dk was victorious!" even though he lost..
• The minimap image seems very plain, maybe spice it up a bit.

Approved and moved. Congratulations on your second approved map, GaDDeN.

[GaDDeN]

The "Blade.dk was victorious" thing is not a bug; he did win the game by surviving longer than all other opponents. Or did the message show earlier?

Yes the minimap is dull, i created it solely for the section and didn't feel for makin something advanced.

Will add that in future versions :)

[Tim.]

I won, thank you very much. :P Blade lost much earlier.

[Eternal_Dread]

Hmm, this kinda sounds like another, not-so-well known map (which I lazily cannot recall the name of T_T) but it looks better to me. Checking it out now.

[Taur]

Wave 25 is pretty unbalanced I think, and I don't think its unintentional. All the naga royal guards that are spawned also summon sea elementals (at a max of 3 per guard I think), so that soon the sea elementals out number the normal spawns by like 2:1. Is that on purpose?

[GaDDeN]

Yes wave 25 is on purpose. I don't want people finishing this map too easily; waves 25-30 are all very hard and the difference between 24-25 is huge.

[Taur]

Wave 26 I found was a bit easier than wave 25. Wave 26 wiped out all my front line burrows and left only a handful of disorganized burrows left. But these burrows beat wave 26 (thought it was very long and took a lot of repairing), but of course I lost horribly to wave 27

[GaDDeN]

Hehe getting that far is quite an achievement anyway :)

[Anitarf]

Umm... can this map be beaten at all? I think you could almost mathematicaly proove that it's impossible.