A matter of time : Blood vs. Tears | Forums

[Zhjaeve]

You approach a neutral army. They attempt to flee. Do you:

Take 1 second to click "leave them", gain reduced xp and tears rep

Take 1 minute to pursue, engage in combat, gain full xp and blood rep

For me, this is one of the most irritating design decisions regarding blood rep vs tears rep.

Why is blood penalized by having to accrue a MASSIVE amount of extra time spent on the map engaging in pointless, trivial combats? When you have a large number of neutral armies fleeing, you can damn well bet that having to engage in the combat every single time is going to end up as a large amount of additional time.

yes, I realize in previous Heroes this same decision existed, but it wasn't required to gain your blood or tears rep - the tradeoff then was specifically about spending more time for more experience.

It's not fun. It's boring, and hideously unfair to blood. "But you gain less xp as tears, that's the tradeoff!" you might cry. Baloney, I say. The difference in experience between running the complete combat and just letting them go does NOT, in my opinion, make up for the amount of time spent doing so.

I think that the choice of what to do with a fleeing army should be an instant result for BOTH rep types.

What should it be like? Personally, I think the treasure chests are the perfect example. We already have a situation that involves a choice between gold and experience. So what would my choices be?

Blood - Execute them. It is a trivial army that you have surrounded. Obliterate them instantly. You receive experience (reduced amount compared to if you had to kill them in the combat screen) and blood rep.

Tears - Ransom/Extract a "toll" from the army. You let them live and you let them go, but you strip them of valuables/sellable items - you know, like Robin Hood. You gain *gold* (amount to be carefully balanced) and tears rep.

This is a more interesting and gameplay-friendly choice, in my opinion. It doesn't require blood to spend so...much...longer on every map and the rewards themselves both have their high points. I could use more experience, but I could also put more gold to use very often. "BUT WHAT ABOUT LEVEL CAP" you cry? I guess simplest thing would be make the blood choice give gold instead if the hero is level capped.

[Arcane_Weapon]

What? If the army is fleeing in the first place that means your army is VASTLY more powerful. Actually doing the combat for the Blood rep takes like 5 - 10 seconds.

Do you play the game on Quick-Combat because actually fighting battles takes too long for you to bother with?

Silly complaints are silly.

[EasymodeX]

I agree; it's rather tedious.

Zzzz. I hate micro'ing stuff in stupid easy fights.

[Zhjaeve]

Originally posted by Arcane_Weapon:
What? If the army is fleeing in the first place that means your army is VASTLY more powerful. Actually doing the combat for the Blood rep takes like 5 - 10 seconds.

Do you play the game on Quick-Combat because actually fighting battles takes too long for you to bother with?

Silly complaints are silly.

I don't think it's silly at all.

What is the net effect of my choice? I gain the same amount of rep. I lose no creatures. I gain slightly more experience. I have to spend relatively much longer time on it (1 second vs 15/30/60 depending on faction and abilities). Multiply the time difference by the number of times this occurs on a map. It can add up to quite a bit and I do NOT think it is fair.

If quick combat actually resulted in no deaths for my units, then sure, I could use it, but what is the difference between that and my suggestion which nixes the problem to begin with? But don't count on the AI pulling off what a human can do when you have stacks of huge neutral armies.

Stupidly easy no-loss neutral army fights are not interesting. I have limited time in my day. So why do I have to spend 10x as much on these fights as a tears rep player?

This is pretty much why I just go tears on every hero.

[Raptarius]

It doesn't help that Tears has at least twice as many abilities and spells as Blood. I would surprised if anyone went anything but tears even in multiplayer due to the power of healing/reinforcements/counterattack and other useful skills which all are buffed by tears.

The current damage spells are far too weak for blood right now, some of the buffs are okay but there is still a huge lack of choice as far as speccing Blood is concerned.

[Ottozan]

Originally posted by Zhjaeve:
I don't think it's silly at all.

What is the net effect of my choice? I gain the same amount of rep. I lose no creatures. I gain slightly more experience. I have to spend relatively much longer time on it (1 second vs 15/30/60 depending on faction and abilities). Multiply the time difference by the number of times this occurs on a map. It can add up to quite a bit and I do NOT think it is fair.

If quick combat actually resulted in no deaths for my units, then sure, I could use it, but what is the difference between that and my suggestion which nixes the problem to begin with? But don't count on the AI pulling off what a human can do when you have stacks of huge neutral armies.

Stupidly easy no-loss neutral army fights are not interesting. I have limited time in my day. So why do I have to spend 10x as much on these fights as a tears rep player?

This is pretty much why I just go tears on every hero.

Not to mention on every forum too!

[goodrix]

I agree with the OP. Blood path should be just as fast to pick.

[EBugle]

You actually get more blood rep for fighting than for letting them run. In the campaigns, at least, it's 10 blood vs 8 tears. PLUS you can get blood rep from casting blood spells/war cries, so you can actually end up with a fair bit more blood rep than tears rep (though granted it's usually only the one extra since you're probably mopping up in a turn, maybe two).

Also, try removing units from your line up to make things go faster. If they're fleeing, chances are you only need the ranged units anyway.

[Mist_Weaver]

You may have Spaulders of the Avenger equipped; regardless of what you decide to do with a fleeing enemy, the base Reputation gain is +8.

[Mryth01]

How about 3 choices when enemy army flees?
Execution for quick kills, reduced exp and blood
Normal battle, full xp (blood/neutral? dunno)
Letting flee for reduced exp and tears

Becouse I like the idea of Execution, but I still wanna an option for a regular battle (even with fleeing army - if I desire so) to be available.

But yeah execution would really come in handy in multiplayer mid-end game. Not that much as implementation of sim turns (*wink* devs!) but still good time-saver in a time-consuming game.