(I'd much prefer facing chaos late game than facing life. I find archangel and enlightenment a terrifying combo, especially with good buffs on archangels - with chaos you can banish and disjunction - with life banishing is harder, and SoM is an actual threat.)
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Game mechanics
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(September 7th, 2017, 15:53)Seravy Wrote: I don't agree, in fact it's the exact opposite. Chaos is a "strong late" realm, so peace benefits it the second most, Sorcery being first, but after we finish rebalancing Sorcery, Chaos will be tied for first place at the very least. It,s quiet interesting what you are saying here, so while my suggestion that Peaceful/perfectionist is unsuitable for a chaos wizard may be incorrect, you are suggesting that Peaceful is in fact (more) beneficial for Chaos due to late game. This means that we do agree that some personality/objectives (P/O) are more beneficial for certain realms, we just disagreed on which ones. I believe it is mathematically impossible that all P/O combinations will provide equal benefits to a realm, the same way that synergies exist between certain realms and races. I,m not sure what are the moding limitations, it is simply my hope that increasing difficulty for the player should be more than just boosting resources and should take into account variables such as AI P/O and realm synergy, Ai race - realm synergy, Ai realm - retorts synergy, P/O - race synergy.... etc.
My capital has a plague (event not spell) on it. I have not been getting any notifications of city deaths, but the population is down to 8 (from it's original of 20). Is it possible that there are too many other notifications going on, or something else that is hiding the city death notifications?
September 14th, 2017, 06:49
(This post was last modified: September 14th, 2017, 06:52 by Nelphine.)
Thought for Guardian. As 2 picks, its huge. However, in most games I play, the most important part of battles with enemy wizards, is the enemy spells. Generally, I can pick units that are better than their units. So while Guardian is strong, it only adds 1 resistance, which is the area I'd want the most help from, but it adds 33% to attack and defende, the areas the AI is weak at.
Given its 2 picks, I suggest raising the resistance bonus to 2 (maybe even 3) to be comparable to the bonus to attack and to defend. Note, I think it would better to remove the to defend, and instead add 1 or 2 armor, leave resistance at 1, but make it apply to nodes as well as cities (as per discussion of guardian on tiny), but you've said no to that before.
Lunatic AI with 16 cities (roughly half and half dark elf and draconian).
Human with Spellweaver, Astrologer, 11 myrran nodes and 2 arcanus nodes, 2 draconian cities, 1 beastman city, 1 troll city, 4 barbarian cities, and Life Force cast. Max node power. The AI has more power production. Note that my 8 cities are worth roughly as much power as the AI dark elf cities due to life force; then I have 2 draconian and 1 beastman city vs his 8 draconian cities. So he's up 5 cities on me, population wise; and 13 cities building wise (since obviously my barbarian cities do nothing for power production compared to either a dark elf or a draconian city). However, recall that I have spellweaver. This increases power production from all sources by 25%. So my 8 cities +3 half cities are really 10.75 cities population wise; and my 3 cities in terms of buildings are really 3.75 (but we'll ignore this, and just roll it into a round 11 cities for population). So those extra 3 cities compare against his 5 bonus half cities; and we'll just call it even, since there's a good chance his average population is slightly higher than mine due to pop growth bonuses. So he has 13 cities with buildings that I do not, and on population, we call it even due to life force + spellweaver. Assuming they had all power buildings, that's 24 power per city; this isn't true as he actually still has outposts, let alone built up cities, but still, for comparison purposes, we'll assume it's true. This means he has ~312 power from cities that I do not. However, he also has 2 more heavenly lights than I do, and he has 4 Uranus' Blessing. That's an extra 62, total of ~374. However, on my side, I have 11 myrran nodes (average, what, 14 tiles? on max power is 35 power per) and 2 arcanus nodes (average 8 tiles? is 20 power per); which is 425 power. Plus its 1410, and I have astrologer, so I get another 260 power, bringing me to 685; plus I have spellweaver, which further increases that to 856. Additionally we consider heroes and units. Neither of us have any demon lords or archangels, so no units. Heroes: He has the dwarf (no resources), the war monk (no resources), the warlock (super ritual master, and possibly one other; probably level 3 due to heroism? I have no real idea as I don't know where she is) the chosen one (possibly 2 resources, although unlikely; again probably level 3). At most, this is 24 power + 32 skill from warlock, and 24 research and 32 skill from the chosen one. Much more likely is 24 power from the warlock and ~32 skill from one or the other. So probably 56 power production. I have the With giving 40 skill, the Warrior mage giving 40 skill, and the Necromancer giving 20 power and 45 research. Total of 145 power production. But again, spellweaver increases this by to 179. So before cheating bonuses, I appear to have ~600 more power production. (This means the AI without cheating bonuses at all should have ~600 power production.) Then cheating bonuses kick in, and the AI ends up with ~100 more power production than I have. I once again submit that the AI cheating bonuses are probably too high, unless you expect people to have relevant very rares by 1410, as well as almost half the nodes from both planes, and all the best retorts to back them up, as well as extreme luck on heroes AND are playing life; OR they should have at least 30 (or more) highly developed cities (meaning: cathedral and wizards guild and alchemists guild and parthenon) by 1410, as well as at least some of the things listed above. AND the strongest AI in the game doesn't control a single node. (Remember: This is only one of the 3 AI I am facing. I did defeat the 4th, who was the weakest by a significant amount, as he started out as dwarf.)
The question is, with that kind of resource availability do you really expect to have any way of losing? You can prepare a strategy, fortress strike, all kinds of shenanigans.
I have an ongoing game where I'm keeping every AI node warped** and it still pulled off a 10 turns timestop. I thought I'd lost. Thankfully we were at peace then, now I have to keep detect magic up - I hate the time spent waiting for their summons - and blast it. I've paid my way into getting the 2 AIs at war, I'm going to fortress strike soon, then it'll be over. Without cheating it wouldn't have stood a chance. The problem is not the cheating in 1410, I find it to be irrelevant. You're not fighting on equal terms*, but in 1404 the random presence of 5 stacks of common summons can be a game killer. I find that to be the problem, there's no way you can affect the course of the game so early given the lack of resources: if you stay in defence you lose (barring berserkers ofc) and if you don't you open up to the randomness. So in conclusion - reducing cheating at the beginning (and recovering it gradually eventually even raising it later on) might be difficult, but IMHO it's necessary or the game won't ever evolve further to "survive the beginning then you might as well not play because it's a given unless by chance you get trapped in a magical rock paper scissors without the correct tool, but that's quite unlikely". * it's on you to keep an eye on the doomstacks and maintain situational awareness, and plan moves around the situation which you can do in '10, but not till '05. And be allied with the AIs and kill off any chaotic ones first. The unequal terms comes from the AI not having any situational awareness or strategic planning. I wish we could convince some google dude to use this game with the deep learning experiments, you know those things that now beat the top world players at go but not yet starcraft? Wasting time with starcraft is meh  ** I noticed warping nodes doesn't seem to noticeably affect relations btw Seravy. Intended? |
