Quote:The last comment I agree with on time stop. Its the main reason I think cumulative 100/turn is probably too low. But you wanted to base it on the casting skill, so I tried to go with that.
Well, yeah. The military part wins the game even if you only get 10 turns and to prevent that the cost would need to be 3000/turn...so I can't base the cost on that.
I mean, yea you can "only" destroy 10 enemy cities in 10 turns per doomstack instead of all of them but that's pretty close to winning already and 10 turns is unrealistic, we can't make the cost that high.
Quote:Hydras - I'm not beating 1 hydra with halberdiers. I'm beating 5 or 6.
A Halberdier is a 6 sword, 4 shield, 2 heart unit. 9 of those don't kill 5 Hydras. Not even if you give them 2 levels by building a War College. Idk what buff or combat global you used but there had to be something. High Prayer? Blazing March? Both?
Either way, the loss of 1 resistance might be enough, as it makes it fairly vulnerable to Banish, Annihilate and...well, nothing else, really. But, I have doubts - you will usually cast Chaos Surge if you are using Hydras, and that boosts resistance by 2. And at 14 they are immune to Banish tho Annihilate, if backed by Black Prayer will still work.
...idk. maybe the armor reduction is not necessary but I don't think it will hurt either.
Chaos surge is not common with hydras. The chance of having any two given very rares is simply low. Mono realm games especially for humans with enough books to reasonablu guarantee two given very rares is the exception, not the rule.
Use your hydras, don't use mystic surge. See how well they fare.
Halberdiers: gnoll, altar of battle, warlord, one common life buff. (Take your pick) (I don't actually use altar of battle, I normally just win enough battles to raise them to ultra elite.) Beastmen are better but require endurance. Oh and usually mithril or adamantium.
IMHO time stop shouldn't be balanced based on its skill return on investment, because its main result is preventing enemies from taking their turns. It seems to me that it's meant to be a "closer" kind of deal, so it should be costed based on the desirability of a closure deal on any given year. I would consider its return infinite because after it the game is basically over.
(October 3rd, 2017, 18:12)Seravy Wrote:
Quote:Hydras
Quite bad in combat for a very rare despite their strategic combat value, they really need other spells to work: wraithform, fly or surge. Any fix should drop the strategic combat but equally raise their tactical value, for example with pathfinding (the magic spirit version of it if you don't want them to guide other troops) because they're so ridiculously slow, or at least mountaneer as they live in volcanos. In my test game I've gotten 4 undead hydras from a node with a 7 ghouls/2 casters stack, they were with some fire giants too, and I don't even have focus magic. You can just keep casting and shooting forever. Making their def/res weaker would make this even easier and be a buff to undead death. I used mostly warp creature and black sleep, on at least 2, while the ghouls (with darkness, and a +1 from guiding beacon) killed maybe 1 of them on their own, plus another one thanks to supply commander (should it work on magical ammo?). With def 1 I wouldn't even need darkness. They might actually need a resistance buff, how many very rares have so low resistance?
I agree with Nelphine on the need to give a look at surge, +3 speed on the turn it's cast simply breaks tactical. But perhaps that's intended. If that's intended however, then hydras are fine, as their power depends mostly on surge.
Those 4 buffs are buffs you can have with virtually no investment. That's still a fraction of the cost of hydras. They also can't/won't be dispelled.
Hydras, as a very rare unit, should not be so vulnerable to such early units. (Note that bezerkers wreck most very rares when given the same 4 buffs, but I consider that a bezerker problem.)
I firmly believe you are seeing a mystic surge problem, not a hydra problem.
Completed the next Advanced test game - this one took only half a day day not 3 days - I got a better start this time I wasn't playing the two slowest realms and klackons.
Tomorrow I start an Expert game - will probably only have time for one before release. Any suggestion which one of the listed wizards to play? (in the category that has 100% wins for expert as intended outcome)
This is a fun bug! Fighting on a tower has created the same undead, in the same coordinates, on both planes. Here are the saves before and after. I've found demonlord \o/
This test game seems won. After the initial battle against the lizards/chaos Tauron constrained on an island it's been downhill. I've attacked the myrran mono-sorc quite soon, no hope against my undead hordes.
However, as I mentioned at the beginning, Tauron's position changed the game dramatically, and I don't think I'd have had such an easy life if it weren't for that. The amount of cheating seems quite over the top for Expert and a not so bad spellbook selection.
(September 28th, 2017, 05:05)Arnuz Wrote: One last proposal on the surrender system: would it be a problem if having all the AIs banished or defeated allowed the check even before the time limit?
It might defeat the objective of preventing people from not playing the game. But is that a good objective when playing the game is mop-up and feels like a chore?
(September 28th, 2017, 17:51)Seravy Wrote: One last time I'm not changing the surrender system without a very good reason because it's difficult to change.
As I've just decided to stop the current match this came back to my mind.
I agree with you. But I'm not advocating a change in the surrender system. Instead, I'm proposing to call the system from another place, that is, the banishment/defeat procedure. I propose to have a very simple check and call: if there are only banished or defeated wizards, goto surrender.
Quote:This is a fun bug! Fighting on a tower has created the same undead, in the same coordinates, on both planes. Here are the saves before and after. I've found demonlord \o/
No, you only got the units once but they are still marked as "in tower" so they are shown on both planes. This status is only updated at end of turn or if the units move, but getting pushed to another tile doesn't count as moving.
Quote:Instead, I'm proposing to call the system from another place, that is, the banishment/defeat procedure. I propose to have a very simple check and call: if there are only banished or defeated wizards, goto surrender.
The system is part of the end-of-turn astrologer calculation so doing that would update astrologer and historian immediately. That's probably not bad but the two procedures are in different ovr segments and these segments don't seem to call each other so it has a fairly high chance of not working.
Besides, what you ask for ultimately only forces the recheck to happen immediately instead of some time during the next 4 turns. That's not much of an improvement. Unless you mean by "go to surrender" to always surrender without checking the real conditions in which case that's rejected. We don't want the game to end just because the human player takes out the fortress of the last wizard who is otherwise 5 times more powerful than himself. It's not doable anyway, if you call a procedure from a far location, you can't call into the middle of it, skipping the first half where the conditions are checked.
I mean with the conditions, apart from the year. I agree with what you say here, just not with the need to slog through the city window screens of the last 30 turns of an already won game. So, yes, what you describe in the first part as "probably not bad". I have no idea what an ovr segment is, I'd give it a try to see if that works, if that does good, otherwise never mind.
In the meanwhile, I've done another test game. It was very quick.
It looked ok, slowish realm but a fast race and chaos can work well destroying stuff, right? But alas, I was on a small island. So basically I was like Tauron in my last game. A bit better because I'm human I guess, but still, I found a neutral halfling (again) city and attacked it - turn 24, but with a bit of bad luck gnoll swordsmen and spearmen got slaughtered by the halfling shamans despite cloak of fear. Lucky works! Right afterwards, a stack of 2 naga/4 elven swordsmen gets the town, 2 naga left, revealing my proximity with a maniacal expansionist 1C/10S runemaster with already a druid?! And on the next turn the town is left empty? Super strange. I was already behind so I just conquered it. I explore a little, the fortress has 8 spell focus nagas and the druid. I raze a town but then a wandering stack comes back - 9 nagas of which one magic focused, no chance. I'm down to one half empty gnoll city and the nagas are approaching, it's over.
An RVL use shows that this AI already has 23 nagas of which 10 magic focused despite having no nodes. The cheating really needs to be toned down, at the beginning it's ridiculous.
If the purpose of the cheating is to fill up garrisons, why don't you base it on the number of the cities?
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