Irgy Wrote:Ok, so the counter isn't as trivial as I thought, which is actually a good thing because he became as useless in MP as Loki otherwise.
Kinda off-topic, but how is the earliest (heroic, although illusionist too) archmage in the game useless? Gibbon can offer much more than just Impersonate leader.
Irgy Wrote:You can still counter it though using two simple, if somewhat more costly methods:
1. Declaring war, which effectively completely prevents him entering your city - other than by capturing it of course which doesn't help him use the ability.
2. Making an agreement for them not to use it on you if you don't declare war. You can argue how binding these agreements are but you have to agree there's a cost in this and future games to breaking an agreement, and that balances out the power of it.
So it's not trivially countered, but it can still be countered.
I agree declaring is a fool-proof way of countering it, although the seven pines or peace could insta-stop the war and then you could rush in, but that's an extreme example.
Irgy Wrote:I'd say snowfall was one spell that did a pretty good job of crippling Bob in RBFFH2PBEM1. Not as crippling as this maybe but it did the job more than well enough. The spell "Peace" is also similar in the amount of disruption it could cause to the game in general, although it certainly won't cripple anyone. Impersonate Leader is still probably the most disruptive spell in the game, but it at least has rivals in that regard. But that's a side issue really.
Snowfall is powerful, but you need ice mana for it and that's rare.
Peace doesn't enforce an actual peace treaty, so if I cast it in this game your free to re-declare on me and the only difference is that you'll be kicked out my borders temporarily and I'll be down a hero. Not that effective if you ask me.
Irgy Wrote:On the whole, not needing open borders does kill some of my arguments, but there's still a counter by way of declaring war, which you can do as soon as you see the message that he's been built. The scenario you describe sounds situationally powerful rather than game breaking, which is exactly how it should be. Plus you seem to be assuming he could be used while at war in an openly 2v2 (or similar) situation, which he can't.
So I'm still voting against a ban.
TBH, I'm split on the issue. On the one hand, you do give some good points given the difficulty of casting it successfully, but if you can do it, it's one of if not the biggest game changing spell there is.
BTW, does anyone know what happens if your on the receiving end of the spell? I ask because the AI doesn't cast it and it's not the sort of thing MP people do regularly. Do you skip your turn/just press enter/control the other civ or something?
WarriorKnight Wrote:Kinda off-topic, but how is the earliest (heroic, although illusionist too) archmage in the game useless? Gibbon can offer much more than just Impersonate leader.
Sorry, I was so caught up in that one ability I said something that makes no sense. You're quite right, he's very useful on his own either way. I was just talking about the ability itself. Loki's pretty useful even without culture flipping cities too actually.
WarriorKnight Wrote:I agree declaring is a fool-proof way of countering it, although the seven pines or peace could insta-stop the war and then you could rush in, but that's an extreme example.
Nice, never even thought of that. That's such a good trick that I think you're silly to have given it away just to make ground in an argument
WarriorKnight Wrote:Snowfall is powerful, but you need ice mana for it and that's rare.
Gibbon's pretty rare too, though I see your point in that anyone can get him if they're determined to. Pillar of Fire might have been a better comparison for me to make there.
WarriorKnight Wrote:Peace doesn't enforce an actual peace treaty, so if I cast it in this game your free to re-declare on me and the only difference is that you'll be kicked out my borders temporarily and I'll be down a hero. Not that effective if you ask me.
Hmm ok not even worth it then. I always just assumed it forced a 10 turn unbreakable peace treaty, but as you can tell I've never actually used it. What's the point otherwise though? Seven Pines you can sacrifice a warrior to cast it, but Corlindale is hardly worth throwing away to do basically almost nothing. I dare say it has some niche uses (such as that trick you just came up with), but not so useful on the whole then.
In that case the only thing I'd really compare Impersonate Leader to in terms of disruptiveness is a worldspell. There's a ritual to give you another one of those too, but it's very late in the tech tree.
WarriorKnight Wrote:TBH, I'm split on the issue. On the one hand, you do give some good points given the difficulty of casting it successfully, but if you can do it, it's one of if not the biggest game changing spell there is.
Well, I'm happy to agree with this assessment, and if that leaves us voting differently so be it. It doesn't effect me personally, I just like to argue about stuff
Irgy Wrote:Nice, never even thought of that. That's such a good trick that I think you're silly to have given it away just to make ground in an argument
Doesn't make that much of a difference, for any non-Elohim civ to pull it off you need the seven pines, and there's only one of those on the map. Since I'm the one playing the Elohim, you can't have a guaranteed way of using it against me. I on the other hand... :neenernee
I'm in favor of banning Impersonate leader. Simply due to the fact that it takes control away from the player and lets the opponent do whatever the heck he/she wants while the player can only wait on the sidelines.
This is a single player mechanic that shouldn't have any place in multiplayer and i consider this the equivalent of grabbing someones cards and ripping them in half.
I'm not sure what all it can control. But I don't want to enact a post-facto ban without at least 5 of the 6 of us voting for it. I suppose worst case, we become the evidence Irgy's asking for Tech trading wasn't banned until RB got burned by it, after all.
We can accomplish the same thing if someone gets to Gibbon and then chooses not to impersonate, and for that matter, I see the argument that spellstaff/snowfall in PBEM 1 had nearly as much effect, as well as the argument that the consequences for the caster might also be severe.
And yes, I did see that you're trying to prove your Basium point in PBEM 5, Irgy .
Mardoc Wrote:And yes, I did see that you're trying to prove your Basium point in PBEM 5, Irgy .
Trying and failing though. I couldn't put dibs on him (though I think the reasons why not were fair enough) and now I'm committed to Hyborem instead just so I don't miss out completely. If someone had picked the obvious Basium-cheese leader (Capria) I'd have ded-lurked them in the hopes of talking them into it, but no-one did. No idea who if anyone is going to build it now.
I'm pinning my hopes on PBEM 4 now, but I'm already thoroughly spoiled in that so I wouldn't get to be involved anyway.
Guess I'm new to the forums, followed one of Irgy's post on civfanatics here...
This is gonna be an off-topic post, just hoped to get some quick answers...
ignore the semi-rant below if u wish =D (primer for the qns below lol)
Been a long time FfH player, used to be active around the fanatics forums and #erebus, played multiple FfH MP games with the old guys ~ushram(kraken121) and co. over hamachi.
That was while I was still with 6hrs nightly to burn non-stop on FfH lol~
Well... random other commitments have taken its toll on my gaming life so I've just went back to playing with a couple of buddies at work on/off at intervals when we could get say 1-2 hours together.
Kinda miss the old times when we were able to get games going purely with human players... so looking around here to see how things... progress...
So... here are the qns~
New to PBEM, so... I'm I correct to say u guys are playing turn-based, sending it to the next subsequent player?
Noticed u guys have similar playing times... So you could get multiple turns in in say one evening? (was tracking the dates of the posts lol) So... whats the average waiting time between turn rounds? Like... every half an hour or so early on?
How long do these games take? I'm kinda used to 6 hourish sittings in the old days for a standard-largish sized map. So turn based should get it done in... maybe weeks?
I'm guessing playing it PBEM also eliminates the OOS issues?
Sorry for hijacking and asking so many random questions lol~
Just wanted to check and see if I should lurk around and are suitable for PBEM games haha
Either way, interesting progress on the game... would take a look at it in more detail when I get home from work lol
so I've just went back to playing with a couple of buddies at work on/off at intervals when we could get say 1-2 hours together.