A hybrid genre - AoS meets Natural Selection

I've played a few AoS like ToB & 3 paths. A few things I've noticed (apart from hero imbalances).

1) In ToB, I want the mortar teams / meat wagons to keep whacking the towers. Instead, they switch targets to whatever unit is closer.
2) The paths and the volume of units sent are too predictable.
3) Once one side has the upper hand, there is no way that the losing side can get back, as their income is lower and they (may) have lower level heroes.

Taking a clue from Natural Selection, I hit upon this idea - What if one person on either side is a Commander?

He will have control of all the units once the units are within a certain range of the enemies. That way, he can focus fire the mortars / catapults.

He can choose what units to build. Each barrack can have a auto cast list like this:
FFFL
AAA
MMMD
F: Footman, A: Archer, M: Mage, L: Leader (Strong Melee Unit), D: Siege weapon.
That way, the general can mix the forces used for attack.

Generals. The money gained my the commander can be used to purchase generals. Generals will have no attack, but will have useful auras.
Examples. General Motors: Endurance aura, General Defence: Devotion, etc. They level up and each level up will let them upgrade their aura.

Most AoS maps have units following a standard route. The commander can summon an invisible, invincible building, with no blocking (which somehow looks like a general), called General Direction. All units which are in it's AoE will be given an attack-move order to it's rally point. (Any units without an active order will be given an attack-move to the enemy Commander's building). General Direction may be unsummoned. He also needs to be purchased.

Also, when a side has started losing buildings, we should increase the amount of gold/sec the side recieves, to sort of even the score...

Now I haven't started this map, (I'm too busy playing WC3, Neverwinter, Working 9 - 6, et al.) But this is an idea that's been going through my mind... I'd like you guys to think about it and write your thoughts.

If any of you decide to go ahead with it, I'll be glad to help. (And if nobody does go ahead with it, I'll start full time on this in Jan...)

Well your right about most of it except that the point of these maps are for players to concentrate on hero leveling and combat, not the hastle of controling a whole army.

So, for those people who like to control an army, we can have a slot for the commander on either side. That way, they can use uber strategy to overwhelm the micro tactics used by the walking units.

If you've played Natural Selection, like CS, you are a soldier with a FPS view. Similar to CS, you go around killing Aliens with your team. But the difference is one guy is the commander. He has a top down view of the map (He doesn't fight). He builds structures (Warcraft Style) and gives the other guys orders (which they may / may not follow). This brings around much more intense teamwork than is there in CS.

And by using General Direction, apart from using the standard 3 paths, you could deliberately make your units go through a shortcut or to a rear enterance to the enemy base. It'll add more dynamism to the play.

The idea behind having one perosn control 'the armies' and the others just be simple AoS style heroes sounds very similar to a game i'm making. The only difference that i have is the added affect that the main target, the one that ends the game, is a living breathing unit.

You can see details on it: HERE

I hope to have it out by the end of November

It sounds okay. But you have to make the role of the "commander" interesting. People do not want to control armies, they want to control heroes. So be careful.

It may be a bit of a pain to trigger, but consider having it so that if there is no commander, the AI takes over and builds (or just is given via triggers) the requisite buildings. If the commander ditches, you might want to allow one of the other players to take their place, "stashing" their hero while they play general.

Actually, I like that best. If a player elects to stash their hero, they can control the armies for as long as their hero is in reserve. You might want to give a little experience to the hero so that they're not permanently crippled by this, but the cost of this is that the team is now one hero short out on the battle field. Players can rotate playing general, or if nobody wants to, the AI does it without help (i.e., spews units out to go die).

Well, DOTA had this once, when one player could stand in the "Circle of command" and control units.

Also, the amount of units is really a bit too large for any effective micro to happen. And also, this could be abused by letting the commander "stock" units, then attacking with a humongous force of hundreds of units. One might as well give each hero limited control over a side (though this didn't work well either, example animal wars).

Also, try to balance the importance of commander and hero so that people won't get bored playing either.

Keep this in mind and go on. I think if properly done this could be above the standard AoS (cause it's a new feature, and people like new features). Also, what happens when the commander leaves?

Oo, hadn't thought about stockpiling units. You could avoid this by having unit spawn STOP during upgrades - basically, have triggers watch for researching, and if a building is researching, unit spawn ceases. To counter the lull in units, the commander could hire units/create buildings, but at a cost. They'd also want to alert the troops (i.e. heroes) to this fact, so that the heroes could bolster the defenses.

To make it more interesting for the commander,
he can summon generals, which can be moved around the map. The generals are heroes which the hero can control. So, he does have hero moving.

Plus, he can upgrade, change force compositions, direct forces. So iinstead of having 1 uber hero, he'll have 5-6 generals moving around.

To prevent stocking, there will be this trigger:
(Any units without an active order will be given an attack-move to the enemy Commander's building)
Also, if a guy stocks units, he's opening a hole in his defences for the enemies to attack through.

Silver_Lynx, your Bunny Hunters is looking like a Capture the Flag map for WC3. Seems like an interesting concept. Mine would be an AoS with the ability for one guy to control his forces.

Biflspud, the hero stashing is a good idea. He will get experience while stashed, as all experience is shared (to an extent) amongst alllies in Wc3. I never thought about upgrading your army - Nice idea though. The people rotating seems like a triggering challenge, but might be possible.

Ant: When the commander leaves, ((plan)and if no one becomes the commander in say, 15 seconds) the AI takes over, and does the standard 3 paths routine.

That rotation part wouldnt be trouble. Youd just have to set a variable, which accesses a player array.

Interesting topic discussion IMO. I was planning to have this style of gameplay used for my mod when it comes around. Basically we have ther heroes and give some limited commander abilities.

I think that for this to be balanced, you should not be able to tamper with the amount of units being made, nor the speed at which they are made. They should be constant and consistent, like in DOTA/TOB. What I think should be controllable however is what unit types are being made.

IMO I think it would be interesting if the commander was able to choose the army types. Lets use an example.

Units will spawn every 15 seconds. Each wave consists of 15 food worth of units. This is where things get intersting. Lets say there's a rock paper scissors style of untis and we have a unit dealing magic damage, a melee unit and a ranged piercing unit. Melee > Piercing > Magic. Basically you would balance your army by choosing a mix army of just the right amount of each. If there are more melee guys in their side, counter by pumping out more magic dudes. If they have mass magic, pump out a few more ranged.

At a certain point you would be able to tech tho, and get more powerful melee units, or upgrade their damage, or some other passive ability. This is what the commander gets.

Each individual hero user would go on doing their thing like in regular hero maps. There would be towers too, and early game towers would be hell tough while late game they will be pretty easy to take down. However with commanders in play, you can rebuild and upgrade some towers if you have the cash to spare. I think the most balanced way is to give each commander a constant cash flow, so both are able to use their earnings however they want. Extra cash can be given by individual players or maybe even use of a poolgold function. This would help pump out stronger units faster and earlier for the sacrifice of uber-heros.

I think it'd be intersting to be able to customize an army suited for both situation and maybe even hero accompanyment. If a hero had Trushot aura, you'd want to fit in as many range-using units as possible, and maybe even tech melee units that are ranged (Like Huntress). This way even if all individual players choose different heros, you can have armies that compliment them.

Someone has something like this b4 where one player could determine where to send the spawns (eg x2 as many to the left side, but less down the middle). Maybe the commander gets so much gold per secound and the barracks can spawn different units (with a slighty restock delay to prevent massive spamming). This would work well because the general could easily determine what sort of unit to spawn and where.

I got an idea, how about instead of any direct control being placed, the commander can select the spawn(like click on them) and they come under his/her control. Then when deseleted, they revert back to the computer and return to thier AI path. this would probally be the best of both worlds.

good idea, never thought of that. I think i might use that.

Yes...

This would be very easy to do.

Make the army the commander gets when he becomes commander a separate comupter player, then share control when he becomes commander, then give his hero to a neutral passive and teleport it into a corner to simulate the "Guy goes into the comm chair" effect.