Suggesting on upgrading Tatics issue

Just had a thought that might make a lot of people happy about the whole upgrading a unit's tactics. The problem seems to lie in the fact that once you do it, it's permanent. But say you are reading the forums and someone suggests an army composition you like, you almost have to start fresh to get the exact composition unless (by great chance) you already have the same.

So the idea. Why not make it so whatever level of a unit you have, you are able to adjust all their tactics on that level or below. What this means is, if you have a Level 4 Unit, you can adjust all of their Level 1, 2, 3 & 4 tactics whenever you want, to whatever you want. Included in this is the idea that, if you want, you can downgrade him to a Level 1 unit. You would still have him unlocked to a Level 4, so if you wanted to, you could re-upgrade him to a Level 2, 3, or 4 at any time. While playing on a downgraded unit, you should also be earning experience to continue to upgrade him (so in theory, you could be playing with a unit that is able to level up to Level 4, but you are using as a Level 1 and while you are doing this, he earns an upgrade to Level 5).

If this was the set up. You could see an army list on the forums that you like and the only thing holding you back from making it (if you have the units), is not having a specific unit upgraded enough. So you would say, hmm, I just need to upgrade this unit and then try this out. Opposed to how it is right now, when you see that army list you like, you go, hmm... I have that unit, but if I upgrade him to that, there never going back to how I am using it now. Or, I have that unit upgraded to that level, but using different tactics, so I have to buy a whole new unit and spend the time to upgrade him, just to try this out.

I know this doesn't allow you (Cyanide) to make any money on it, but it would make the user base very, very happy.

im realy against easy resets of unit skills - it will lead to even more clone armies. Currently there is only few completny different band types in play but at least they mostly have different skills. If there will be option to change whole tree for free whole meta game become a clone wars... Now its at least sligtly more personal

I really don't agree. The same thing can happen in every table top game, all competitive video games, every TGC and they don't seem to have a "clone wars" problem (or if they do, no one seems to mind).

What will happen is people might start by cloning someone to see what it's like, but then they will make tweaks to it and make it there own. Forcing people (a lot of the time, regrettably) to have only have one set up (or having to have a million units who are all slightly different), is not going to go far with creating a user base.

Imo only thing that should be fixed - is a problem of better and worse skill choices.
When all skills will be more or less equal.

Its like difference between Diablo 2 and 3 - one gives an option to switch skill points and other not and in D2 it was not a but but a feature - that changed in D3 brought many controversies.

Diablo isn't necessarily the best comparison to this game.

IMO, if they are going to keep it the way it is, then they should at least allow you to hold 20+ troops in an army for free, so I can have a Level 1 Skeleton Warrior, a Level 2 Skeleton Warrior, and Level 3 Skeleton Warrior all upgraded to different things because right now, I have three Skeleton Warriors all at Level 1 who can all be upgraded, but if I do (to try out a different army set up), I can never go back to the army setup I have right now (which I like and don't want to lose). So this means that to try something with a Level 2 Skeleton Warrior, I need to buy a new one and Level up one of my old ones. Which would be fine, if I had enough slots, but currently I'm running out of slots so have to be careful about what I buy or I will be out of slots and screwed if I ever want something else.

Diablo isn't necessarily the best comparison to this game.

Maybe not best - but known by everyone

And to be honest when you compare time needed for leveling units Vs D2 character - comparasion will be quite brutal

IMO, if they are going to keep it the way it is, then they should at least allow you to hold 20+ troops in an army for free, so I can have a Level 1 Skeleton Warrior, a Level 2 Skeleton Warrior, and Level 3 Skeleton Warrior all upgraded to different things because right now, I have three Skeleton Warriors all at Level 1 who can all be upgraded, but if I do (to try out a different army set up), I can never go back to the army setup I have right now (which I like and don't want to lose). So this means that to try something with a Level 2 Skeleton Warrior, I need to buy a new one and Level up one of my old ones. Which would be fine, if I had enough slots, but currently I'm running out of slots so have to be careful about what I buy or I will be out of slots and screwed if I ever want something else.

Option to reset skills for ducats/cyans will be enough but i still insist for realy high price of such changes.

In case of skeleton warriors you can always level them up and when you need lev 1 - you can simply destroy one existing and by a new one for realy low price. The problem is rather with elites/legandaries - but IMO forcing player gathering xp for a new unit is one of many options of keeping players ingame. One of most classical and workong options.

mayby option to change lvl but no choice of skills so if y have lvl2 unit with parry y can change lvl 1 or 2 but y cant change skill it will be alvays parry

IMO it will partially prevent of making clone strategy but will give for us more flexible strategy option with only 12 units slots actualy when i have 10 max lvl unit allmost 60% of my lions is usless cuse they have to hi lvl ;( and dismissing 3 lvl 5 units its too painfull especialy when i know that to make them lvl 5 i spend allmost 30-40h of playing

mayby option to change lvl but no choice of skills so if y have lvl2 unit with parry y can change lvl 1 or 2 but y cant change skill it will be alvays parry

IMO it will partially prevent of making clone strategy but will give for us more flexible strategy option with only 12 units slots actualy when i have 10 max lvl unit allmost 60% of my lions is usless cuse they have to hi lvl ;( and dismissing 3 lvl 5 units its too painfull especialy when i know that to make them lvl 5 i spend allmost 30-40h of playing

i really like this solution!! it sounds like the perfect balance between avoiding "copy paste armies" and having more strategic options.

I like the solution Hod proposed, that will give more flexibility to the game than its current state and facilitate the growing of a players community.

Moreover, the copy/paste armies issue is not in any way solved by the current system and comparing with Diablo 2-3 doesn't make any sense (there you had only a single hero to lvl up and it was also item based!!! Moreover if you played Diablo II a lot, you'd have noticed that all the best players where copy/paste with the same characters/stats, only the equipment did change...). Atm, if you want a copy/paste army you can get it in 2 ways: pay it with real money or re-lvl up every single unit every time (and usually loose) for many, many hours... I don't think that is the true aim of this game and will keep a big base of players interested in the long run (if you have to pay real money or time everytime you want to change anything in your army composition you'll get tired of it soon enough...).

The interesting points of this game are to try different tactics and armies and to win in different situations with your ability, lvling up your units is a nice addition that allow you to gain experience while playing before having a full lvl up army, but it should not become the "end game" objective.

If the copy/paste problem is present (everyone wants to play with one army composition and only one), then it is more only a problem due to an AP unbalance since you shouldn't win only having "the same army" as a strong player, but you should also be good with your tactics.

There is no easy solution to "clone" or "copypaste" armies. Even tabletop mini games have this problem.

Humans are fairly good at optimization problems. When you get a bunch of humans together on the internet, optimization tends to occur very rapidly. Then everyone uses the "best" option.

The only solutions I'm aware of are to have a very diverse strategic landscape (i.e. lots of different missions on lots of different maps with lots of different objectives, perhaps procedurally generated or random) or a rapidly shifting strategic landscape (i.e. constant rule changes/patches, or additional factions with intriguing options).

Most games these days go with the second option.

Making it harder (i.e. more expensive, in money or time) for gamers to create optimized armies will just frustrate them. Optimizing is part of any game, especially wargames.