I'm out for now

[m59gar]

been fun hangin around and playing master of magic again, but I just can't do this to myself anymore.

* Maniacal wizards all around you all the time

* Constantly Corrupting my resources (and some races have no shamans???)

* Naga doomstacks w/ focus magic

* Research costs are now so excessive you'll never have anything useful in time to matter

I'm not having fun anymore. This game is unplayable until there's an option to remove Maniacal + Aggressive personalities, Corruption, and Focus Magic from the game. I would like to play Expert difficulty level and beyond without the bullshit cheese that makes the game irritating rather than challenging. I'm not even at war with these fucking Maniacal wizards, they just start Corrupting my resources for no reason and then out of the blue 9 focus magic'd nagas show up. What is going on??

It's to the point where I just spent 3 hours rerolling games looking for one with no Maniacal or Aggressive wizards starting next to me, no Chaos wizards, no Sorcery wizards. And then I realized I have to stop. I'm not playing, I'm just full of anger.

[Seravy]

Why Expert? There are THREE difficulty levels to pick from below that. Why play high difficulty if you don't know how to beat it? (especially in an experimental version with a major change. Even I played on Advanced for the first test game.)

(also note Nagas were nerfed in this experimental release, they lost 25% of their poison. If it is inadequate, I suggest posting actual save files in the Nagas thread or the release thread showing what your problem is. But keep in mind Expert is a high difficulty level. You are expected to know how to counter various strategies, including Nagas there, so I'll only consider it a valid complaint if you had no reasonable way to fight back against them.)

[teelaurila]

Hi there,

For what it's worth, I felt quite the same way after losing my first 4 games on expert. Reading the "Current Impossible Strategy" thread (not all of it!) was quite an eye-opener. Sounds like you did like I did and turtle'd up to develop cities for way too long. The AI's with their bonuses will just run away to levels you can't beat. You need to be aggressive and strike first. The big thing is, when you can strike first, you can also strike at lairs/nodes, and resources from there will balloon you hugely.

That said, I am presently finding Volcanos to be gawd awful. Probably will not keep me from winning my current game, but messes up with my beautiful cities. The thing is there is nothing to do about it, even though I play Nature. Can't match the casting with Change Terrain with the AI bonuses. If the AI really knew how to use them, they could easily wipe out all my minerals in a few turns, and then destroy all food to each city in a few turns each. It's like slow-mo armageddon in mid-game that is unstoppable except by banish. Luckily they are not quite smart enough to employ it fully, it seems. The flip side is, Volcano is nearly useless for the player to attack with.

[Seravy]

Well, in fact, the AI is bound by its personality in using overland spells.
Unless they have the nastiest personalities that love casting volcanoes often, they won't use that many. But even those personalities have to use other spells, like summon creatures, otherwise while they are busy planting volcanoes, the player could just ran them over with whatever uncommon creature they researched.

(also, while this isn't that obvious, the AI can only target areas around cities it has found before as Volcanoes are technically city curses. So if you never let any of their units close to your cities, you are safe. Easier said than done, I know.)

Cheap research was actually a major contributor to the AI "running away" and also to AI catching up to the player when the player does manage to be ahead, but of course we'll need to play more using the new version to be sure that was the only problem or not.

[Nelphine]

Ive never run into the crazy doom stacks of common units (except when I do things like leave my fortress empty, when its clearly my fault). So I have to say that I consider it perfectly possible to stay ahead of AI there.

That being said, I do think corruption and raise volcano are too powerful in the hands of the AI, IF they are maniacal AND they have no other city curses. You can't realistically stop their units from finding your cities, at lest not on higher difficulties, and those two spells have the highest rage factor when cast against the human. Actual math and in game effect doesn't matter if you rage quit.

[Seravy]

Yeah but making the AI plant flowers for the human isn't exactly a good idea either. It's a game with enemy players, enemies are supposed to hurt you.

So far I've only encountered a game where I lost to corruptions and volcanoes once in these 3 years and that was a lizardmen pure chaos wizard on max difficulty back when lizardmen were still OP. Oh and it was with Suppress Magic from the Myrran wizard on turn 70.

Seriously, if people rage quit over volcanoes, in a game where there is Call the Void, Spell Blast, Armageddon, Doomsday, Meteor Storm, Dispelling Wave, Famine, Pestilence etc, I don't even know what to say.

I guess it would be more popular if city curses just weren't a thing at all but...a Chaos or Death wizard not hurting cities is just wrong.


Besides, isn't Fire Storm in the same tier, a million times worse? Each time they cast it, your entire stack dies, or most of it...whenever they use a volcano instead, I'm happy...

[Nelphine]

No, volcano FEELS worse, much much worse. It happens too early, and it literally has no counter in the game.

Armageddon? Disjunction. And even if that doesn't work, control 15+ nodes and you don't need cities. Volcano? Can happen super early, and can turn your best city into garbage WITH NO COUNTER.

Fire storm? Rebuild troops. I laugh gaily when I see this spell - they could cast 4 volcanoes instead and thank god they didn't. Death city curses? Disenchant area, consecration, defeat the wizard and regain your beautiful city. Volcano? Its done, I can't do anything about it. Call the void? Same thing - I'd much much rather they cast 2 call the voids rather than 4 volcanoes (let alone 20 volcanoes).

Dispelling wave? Spell lock, or use less buffs or use combat buffs until you defeat that wizard. 

Volcano has no counter. Volcano takes the biggest luck based icing in the game, ores (so one of the biggest feel good moments) and says 'Nope you lose AND there is NOTHING you can do about it'.

Corruption does the same thing but can be purified. But corruption comes much faster than volcano, and usually it means the sane AI will attack weak stacks - such as shaman or priests. So you have to dedicate entire stacks to guarding them which you just can't do that early. So effectively its as bad as volcano until you win the war (which at least is deal-with-able. Corruption is infinitely preferable yet every time an AI doesn't cast corruption I'm thankful. I would rather my opponent cast choas rift or earthquake every single time I see corruption.)

These two spells are the most important reason why I play mono life barbarians on poor minerals. I never have to feel the rage they bring.

Its not a math thing (even though volcano from your first opponent is worese economically than death city curses or chaos rift or earthquake or call the void); its a rage thing, because there is no counter, and it targets the rarest most special tiles on the map.

[Seravy]

Volcano takes the biggest luck based icing in the game, ores (so one of the biggest feel good moments) and says 'Nope you lose AND there is NOTHING you can do about it'.

Wrong. Volcano says "Nope, you aren't winning by pure luck. Try something else." which is a good thing.


Except that people hate it because they want to win by luck, or just win for whatever reason. Game would be a million times more popular if I labeled the "easy" difficulty as if it was "hard", too.

But corruption comes much faster than volcano,

Actually this here is not always true. If the AI hasn't started with Corruption, and Raise Volcano shows up as a choice, they pick it before Corruption and don't even bother with that because it's strictly inferior. But it's far more likely that it hasn't shown up and they did get Corruption first I guess.


If this is such a problem we can cut ores from the game entirely, remove transmute, corruption, raise volcano and shamans. But if it comes to that, I rather retire and accept that players are broken, not the game. That's one thing I cannot fix.

I understand human psychology is to blame but that isn't something I can do anything about.

[Nelphine]

Correct.  Not trying to suggest you should.  Just trying to get you to acknowledge that and account for it when trying to balance the spell. You can't fix it, but you can take it into cobsideration - no matter what the math of those 2 spells says, i beliebe they MUST be weak, so that you can point that out when someone hates on them. Don't point out they're balanced, point out that they exist to counter luck, even if that sucks, but they ate purposefully on the weak side because of that. Point out that they are canonical spells that perfectly match lore, but they are weak because they create rage.

[Seravy]

Yea but then people will come with "Chaos sucks, full of useless spells, look at Corruption, Raise Volcano etc"...had that for Death and Chaos both. It's that people want to always be on the good end of the di...errr spells.
Same with the research. Too slow? Not fun to play. Not slow? Hey the AI gets too much resources we can't win fix it!
...no sir you can have one or the other. "Quick research for me, slow for the AI" is only fun until you realize the enemy is not fighting back and you're playing solitaire.

...and this is my problem with Spell Binding. Players enjoy it being powerful when they play Sorcery. Nerf it too much (likely all but solutions 3) and they'll rage because their favorite spell is now crap. And even if I were to explain to those on the receiving end "but the AI can ONLY steal your armageddon with it, not a second spell" they'd still rage quit... So we'd lose one group (and I'm in this one btw) but not gain the other.

We've had the "weak city curses" game in vanilla and it was worse. People hated playing the entire realm because it had like 3-4 useless spells in it. (well ok, in vanilla city curses weren't the only useless spells, but Chaos was strong unlike Death.)