POLL: Permanent allies

[Sandman25]

Do you like playing with permanent allies?

[Lyrick]

Whats this for?

[tasonir]

General knowledge/surveying?

I voted for Beogh and Yred, and didn't select any zombie option. I have used animate dead from time to time, but I don't feel forced into it, and also don't really love it. They're useful but I don't feel like going it alone is that terrible of an option. With mutli-level recall on the ally gods, bringing your minions along is quite easy and it's a very useful power.

[damiac]

I think it's intended to go with Berder's now locked thread about a way to get minions out of your way, which went into a discussion about how perma allies kind of suck.

[and into]

I like animate skeleton/dead when I'm with Kiku, as the spells are fun with corpse delivery, and I don't feel much pressure to keep them around. Even when I am not with Kiku I will still use the spell sometimes, though, so I went with the "I don't like animate skeleton but I cast it because I want to win" option.

I have tried Beogh, don't like how it plays, and thus don't worship him. I don't love permanent allies with Yred, but I like Yred okay overall, so I selected "I love permanent allies with Yred."

[Sandman25]

I created the poll to see whether my impression that most players like permanent allies even though many (most?) top players don't like them is true.
Yes, it was triggered by that locked thread.

I voted "never" for Yred/Beough but "I love Animate".

[Greyr]

I voted in my love for Yred.

I like permanent allies, even if the current options aren't very good end game.

[mopl]

Voted for Yred and Beogh.

I usually "upgrade and stash" my allies somewhere, and recall them when needed. It's a bit more tedious with Beogh, because allies gain XP, but still doable. They once even cleared Elf:3 chamber for me

I "never" cast Animate Dead/Skeleton because I forgot to...

[Greyr]

Where did those 24 votes come from? One of the options was empty just a little bit ago.

If everyone could just leave a quick reasoning behind their voting that'd be awesome.

[damiac]

I picked love yred allies because they make you win(but really I just want to be friends with them, love is a bit strong).
I picked never play Beogh, because the one time I played him I didn't enjoy it at all.
I picked animate skeletons for winning, not fun.

My main beef with allies is that they constantly get in the way. I like to play Oka a lot, which makes the problem even worse.

[Bloax]

Gotta go fast, no time for silly allies.

[all before]

Playing optimally with permanent allies (trying to keep them alive) is really, really annoying. Also, permallies with near unlimited supply is broken.

[xentronium]

My allies sing to me, tell me they will never leave me and would die for me...what's not to love?
Even the horrible undead monsters tell me that I'm their only friend.

[Hirsch I]

I only like permanent allies from the Mercenary card. all the others are too clunky to use.

[crate]

Permanent allies from sources other than yred/beogh should go away for design reasons imo; yred and beogh allies have the same problems but are much more of an optional player choice (zombies are accessible to many more characters) so letting them exist is okay.

[XuaXua]

I voted that "I never use Beough.", but I have used Beogh.

[Sandman25]

I voted that "I never use Beough.", but I have used Beogh.

Yes, this is expected behavior. I've won one Beough but will never play it again so I selected the same option.

[duvessa]

[Sprucery]

I voted: love for Yred and animate. I'd have no objections, though, if animated stuff would become non-permanent.

I've still never worshipped Beogh, so no vote there.

[Arrhythmia]

I voted for "I love Animited Dead/Skeleton", "I cast Animated Dead/Skeleton but don't enjoy it, I just want to win", and "I never cast Animate Dead/Skeleton".

[celem]

Never use either ally God. Cast animate to win. I find animate skeleton most tedious but minions help, animate dead at least I can macro.

I've just not tried those gods yet really and they don't appeal, I like the idea of a permanent ally provided it doesn't take lots of fiddling to use.

[Sandman25]

I only like permanent allies from the Mercenary card. all the others are too clunky to use.

It depends. My last mercenary got hostile and gave me Trog's penance (Draconian had upgraded to some specialist and casted a spell).

[Hirsch I]

that's funny as hell.
I use merc card every single time I can. having to take care of a bro, while the bro gets stronger and stuff is so cool. it makes for a nice break from the same tactics in every game too.

[Magipi]

Permanent allies from sources other than yred/beogh should go away for design reasons imo

Skeletons and zombies are not "permanent" like Y and B allies. They don't follow you downstairs, so practically they die when you leave the floor forever. They are pretty much like summons. OK, maybe summons should also go "for design reasons", whatever that means.

[Siegurt]

The design reasons in this case are that optimal play when you have permanent allies is to preserve them for as long as possible, if they die, you're permanently losing your "upgrade". Losing a permanent ally is roughly on par with old-style corrosion (you lose a permanent enchantment bonus to AC or your weapon).

This means that there's a lot of awkward clunky rearranging that you need to do to play optimally, it takes longer and is tedious.

Summons and zombies don't have this problem, it's not particularly optimal to keep them alive, as summons will disappear in short order, and you can't take zombies with you alive or dead. (It might be argued, in fact it earlier was, that keeping zombies alive is also technically optimal, although if so, certainly by a much smaller margin than permanent allies, to the extent that there's some question about the extra turns taken outweigh (in a "possibility of generating more monsters and bad situations" way) the marginal benefit)

[Sandman25]

While permanent allies are similar to old corrosion, there is some difference. Optimal play with permanent allies is to explore without allies (Yred) or with a small number of allies (for Beough, it gives XP to allies in LoS as far as I remember), and then recall more allies when in danger. Losing some permanent allies is a cost for escaping from dangerous situation (other gods have a cost for saving players too). I am not surprised Beough has less love from players because he grants plain weak Orcs so losing/leveling them is much more annoying (or good for those who love RPG).
Another approach with allies is to lure monsters to upper levels where they are instantly surrounded by allies. I am not sure it is bad as if you are able to retreat upstairs it means you were not in serious danger in the first place.

[crate]

Permanent allies from sources other than yred/beogh should go away for design reasons imo

Skeletons and zombies are not "permanent" like Y and B allies. They don't follow you downstairs, so practically they die when you leave the floor forever. They are pretty much like summons. OK, maybe summons should also go "for design reasons", whatever that means.

This doesn't actually fix any of the design problems. I don't want to elaborate here (this is CYC after all, and I've pretty much given up on trying to convince anyone here of anything) but I've thought about this quite a bit and I don't see how zombies are actually any better than other permanent allies. The main reason that zombies being unable to use stairs doesn't change anything is that players and monsters are able to use stairs. (I think that even if you change that--which almost certainly won't ever happen--there are still some irreconcilable design problems but at least they are less major.)

Summons have some problems of their own but I have suggested ways to fix those in the past; I do not believe they are inherently flawed like permanent allies. You should note that one of the problems with summons is that their durations are too long even though they're "temporary" (in most cases--summon hydra doesn't have this problem).

[dpeg]

Permanent allies are indeed very problematic and entirely our (DCSS) fault -- cannot blame Linley on that one.

Restricting permanent allies to a few gods seems fine to me.

On zombies: I championed that zombies and skeletons shouldn't use staircases, and I still think it was an immediate gain in playability. (It was just so painful to travel across levels with your undead thrall.) That didn't fix the design issue, of course, it only papered over the most glaring interface problem. By now I think, all permanent allies (apart from god gifts, i.e. Beogh, Yredelemnul) should slowly crumble/walk away (we can flavourise this any way we like, also don't worry about monster/player symmetry). I would extend this to Fedhas: while I've rarely watched players lure monsters to zombiefied levels, luring is very much a natural thing to do when you invested in an oklob plantage.

[crate]

Yes I would agree that zombies not using stairs does help from a player standpoint.

Making permanent allies into permanent-cost (corpse, fruit), high-duration "summons" (but immune to abjuration, presumably) would seem to be a good direction to go, I think. I personally would extend this to Yred also (Beogh can keep truly permanent allies, if you want; they're already structured to give the player more attachment anyway, hence why I would have Beogh and not Yred keep them) but I can see why that might not be a thing that other people want to happen.