Role of planes

[Nelphine]

Given that I'm against the turn 200 limit (st he very least it should change by difficulty, probably 10-20 turns per difficulty), and I missed the explicit argument - what is against the research? I think it was just due to very rare happening at different speeds.

What if we made it a number of research points instead? So that it would approximate, say, an 8 book strategy getting first very rare (or a dual 4 book strategy, or maybe the average of both?). (I'm not picking 9 or 10 to avoid the research reduction).

Could also arbitrarily assume specialist, in order to to get something near the middle of no reduction, specialist reduction, or sagemaster reduction.

Then again, you didn't like it because the human could max research. But if they do that, they probably aren't at war, so they will be growing stronger than expected. And if the ai on their plane are at war, then the human will be noticeably more powerful than expected. So the towers breaking early actually won't be an issue because the human will be more likely to be ready for it. And if the human is ahead on research, they're more likely to have spells capable of countering any numerical advantage the myrran ai has.

Of course it should probably be mid rare tier not very rare, to match planar travel.  So probably the equivalent of researching the 4 cheapest rare spells.

[Seravy]

Well, if we don't want an artificial limit that affects the human then it doesn't matter if I write "turn 200" or <condition>, it's the same thing so I marked both undesired.
(yes we did talk about it earlier in more detail but this kinda made the whole thing no longer relevant)

In particular, your post contains "That leaves artificially forcing the very rare stage, but I don't think that's actually good design." and that literally says the research limit (which is the most direct way possible to force the very rare stage, even more direct than the turn limit) is not good design.

I agree with that, and we don't want bad design if there is another option. So you are against research, maybe without even noticing.

The turn limit is perfect because it ensures rush players can still rush (but will be at a large disadvantage due to fighting the Myrran too early), or they can wait and grow stronger (in which case they are at a disadvantage because rush builds are weak late, and get to experience the main drawback of their strategy), so either way they aren't affected, but face a harder game than non-rush players. Since rush is more powerful according to what people post, this should be good for the game. Meanwhile late game players can keep towers as is, and play normally, and their late game is guaranteed to exist due to the turns limit, which also makes sure they do lose the game if they perform poorly, as the Myrran wizard will eventually show up, the towers aren't staying closed eternally. Not that we are left with anything else to pick if we don't want the other two. (unless we want the AI to break through based on their own spell research or something else but we don't want games that depend on "did the Myrran pick Theurgist or Sage Master, if yes I'm rerolling the map because they break towers a lot earlier...", nor games where research poor races end up never breaking through.)

(The dynamic tower breaking which wasn't listed as an option, fails at all of these - it artificially forces the player to always pick "open the towers", even if not beneficial, it fails to steer people away from rush both by not offering rush players the option to try to win through economy, and by not ensuring a fair late game for late game players. But let's not start over that discussion, we disagree on this.)

[Nelphine]

no, rush builds are NOT disadvantaged by the turn limit. They conquer the whole plane as early as possible (sure, they don't need to be as fast as I have done before, but I can do it by 1408-1410 on Lunatic; that still means a 'standard' rush build on expert can do it by 1412-13, YEARS before the towers break). They get to then grab all of the late game races from the AI. They then have no threats during the period while they have to rebuild what they conquered. They then have full end game potential. And they get more treasure than late game builds, so they even get more books and picks to make up for not starting with as many books. But they're actually stronger because rush builds have the highest strategic value races, allowing them to effectively block the towers once they do choose to break all 9 at once.

Whereas a late game build doesn't get rolling fast enough, and won't have the build up time after their last war. They can't build 9 full stacks of high strategic units to block all 9 towers, before the towers are even broken.

This is what I'm saying - with turn limit, it becomes all about rush build, to provide maximum time when you have no opponent's, to freely build up whatever you want, and expand to use up all of the larger plane, and the last AI (which is supposed to be the weakness of rush builds) is literally not allowed to try to fight you. And in general, if the human has numerical parity with the AI, human always wins. So they towers can't break after the human already has the whole plane, or it's already over.

[Seravy]

Except, a significant portion of your empire will be of your rush race making your economy worse, and you will have fewer spells. You might have more territory but your cities have been wrecked by battles, while the Myrran cities had no setbacks at all.
Yes, finding books can be a thing but no map guarantees that - it might be the Myrran AI finding them instead.
Tower Blocking is STILL depending on our planar travel choice, not the towers themselves, so that's not relevant for this.

If you are trying to say rush benefits from the game progressing to late game instead of being forced to fight right away, then you are saying rush does not have the weakness of having a bad late game. In this case we should think about why, and fix that. It should NEVER be beneficial for a rush to wait unless it's for preparing troops and resources for the next war for a limited duration.

Either way, since we discarded the other options, we can only choose the turn 200 limit.

[Nelphine]

Right, what I'm saying is that rush weakness is that it runs into an opponent that has been building up at a time when the rush strategy has not had a chance to convert to late game.

Giving a human player years to prepare allows that conversion. It doesn't matter if your cities were damaged in the war because you have years to rebuild them.

You seem to think a rush strategy must continue to play the same for the whole game, which isn't true. For instance, my bezerker game is, kill all 3 arcanus opponents with early bezerkers before they get late uncommons. Then, I can get 9 stacks of buffed bezerkers that have high enough strategic strength nothing except MAYBE buffed hydras can attack them before the towers can break.

Then it literally doesn't matter what the myrran opponent does. I have more cities than them because arcanus is bigger, they can't attack the towers. I can send in sortees of whatever I have (usually wyverns or pegasi or angels) to scout anything I want - if I lose them, it doesn't matter. Now I know everything the opponent has. If I can beat him, for instance if say I get archangels or incarnation (or I find books to get something else like spell lock or spell blast or gorgons; and yes you can't PLAN on getting books on Arcanus, but it would be very rare not to; all my games since then have actually had more treasure in Arcanus than Myrror, sure that may not be the case, but it does happen frequently. And in fact, I still regularly get to clear treasure in Myrror, typically from chaos nodes, but sometimes other nodes as well), I will win. If I can't, I can try summon champion, and probably win. If I can't do that, I can max research, which the AI can't, and just do spell of mastery.

And to get that many bezerkers in 200 turns, I need to build an average of 120 bezerkers. Generally, 6 cities can do it, but I aim for 9. That means the majority of my cities are NOT rush cities; that usually means 25-35 cities of halflings, humans, high men, nomads, orcs. (And a scattering, maybe up to 6, of other races)

And while my example for lunatic is bezerkers, on expert you can do the same with lizardmen and gnolls.

[Seravy]

So basically you do say rush does not work as intended.
Meanwhile I made a new thread for that here : http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...p?tid=9344

It doesn't matter if your cities were damaged in the war because you have years to rebuild them.

But during those years the AI is building up so they'll be even further ahead. You're losing years on repairing damage which they don't have to do and even after that, you build slower, and have a worse building selection (difficulty modifier+having to use whatever race your opponents built cities of instead of having a good core empire of your own late game race). I don't see how this could "not matter".

Then, I can get 9 stacks of buffed bezerkers that have high enough strategic strength

Back to this again. How does that stop a Sorcery wizard with Dispelling Wave? How does that stop stacks of 9 very rares? How does that stop...well, ok Planar Travel is not implemented yet.
So you pretty much claim tower blocking is very bad for the game here because it favors rush and I guess that's right. But we already striked out the "tower blocking is desired" option anyway.

I admit, spell and economic disadvantage doesn't matter if you don't need to actually fight the enemy in many battles. So probably that's the only problem? In that case we likely should pick 1d instead of 1b.

I suspect Life realm might be at fault as well, with Prosperity, Inspirations and Stream of Life you can easily negate the "bad economy" side effect of playing rush. This would be an argument at keeping those spells as high rarity as possible. With Stream of Life you can afford razing subpar cities and rebuild them as High Men or Halfling or whatever you want, as well as ignore racial unrest.

[Nelphine]

Only realm that can attack you is sorcery, with overland dispelling wave. Remember, we're not talking about during combat, we're talking about preventing the AI from attacking at all. Except, due to high strategic strength, you can usually force peace, and prevent them from using overland dispelling wave as well.

And yes, buffed bezerkers/jackals/javelineers have more strategic strength than most very rares. (If you can actually get adamantium slingers, I usually use stacks of 6, and nothing can attack them. They're incredibly powerful for strategic strength.)


However, that's purely when you have a chokepoint. The statement 'if you can get 9 stacks of such units early, you should anyway' is actually a completely reasonable statement. The ONLY reason this is a problem, the ONLY reason why rush get this huge advantage, is that rush are meant to fight and fight and then suddenly someone goes 'hey you've been fighting, I'll attack you while you're weak, and I haven't been fighting so I'm much stronger'.

This actually works very well (I've purposefully immediately broken towers when I finish the last opponent, and the AI promptly breaks 3-5 more, and I can't stop them) when the AI has that choice.

The turn limit says the AI don't have that choice. They're forced to artificially wait. It's that waiting that breaks the disadvantage of the rush strategy. If the AI could actually attack me while I'm down, it would be a completely different game; I would have to carefully ensure I still have some defense while killing the third AI because I might get attacked; I would have to slow down my economic rebuilding to ensure I have enough strength to fend off any incoming attack.

But with a turn limit I don't. I can literally have 1 spearmen to defend my ENTIRE empire, put everything on trade goods, and go completely crazy rebuilding and developing amp towers and gold production across 30 cities. Then I have so much casting skill and gold income, I can switch to buying mass numbers of bezerkers (note: inspirations and prosperity ends up not being needed if I can start this early enough, as I can buy bezerkers in every city every turn; it only takes ~12-15 turns to build the full 9 stacks, although obviously both of them majorly help - but since I play 4 book life as the most extreme version of this, I regurarly miss at least 1 of them even including treasure hunting, and occassionally miss both), and buff them as fast as I can build them. I don't need them to do anything in particular so I can have them literally just go wait near towers. I still have 0 units defending my cities and nodes (ok, probably actually 8 spearmen in every city for unrest, except cities with particularly bad unrest where I might waste time on stream of life, or cities that I settled and so cast stream of life when they were an outpost, assuming I even get stream of life - but since it's uncommon, there's usually enough treasure that I can rely on getting it).


It comes down to, rush strategies are meant to overextend and get slapped down, or they have to go slower thus defeating the purpose of rushing. But a turn limit means that you cannot overextend. You can PLAN on that pause period to play catch up. The plnanning is the problem which is why ideally it needs to be dynamic (and preferably dynamic in such a way that it doesn't change much for late game strategies. That's why I was trying to suggest amount of plane controlled; a late game strategy doesn't normally aim to control that much until turn 200 anyway, making the game the same; a rush strategy, going for that pause period, tries to control earlier; this allows the towers to open, and turns that into an overextension move allowing the AI to slap the rush player down, and say, hey, you lost, slow down next time. Fighting an incredibly powerful opponent when the rush player is at its weakest is exactly what the rush strategy weakness is supposed to be.)

[Seravy]

The ONLY reason this is a problem, the ONLY reason why rush get this huge advantage, is that rush are meant to fight and fight and then suddenly someone goes 'hey you've been fighting, I'll attack you while you're weak, and I haven't been fighting so I'm much stronger'.

That isn't the design behind rush at all. The design is, you either beat everyone fast, and can deal with fighting better than anyone else early, OR you get left behind in spell research and economy and lose due to that.

Yes, overextension is a thing, but rush is designed to be able to deal with it. That's why they are rush, they are meant to overextend. So they get cheap, powerful units, that are efficient at eliminating enemy armies that might be a threat, or work as powerful garrisons that defend cities if needed. Since they don't need to and want to build much economic buildings, they will be producing a lot more troops than others, and more troops allow expanding more.

Furthermore, we can never be 100% sure a certain AI wizard will declare war on the human, so we can't rely on that in our design of rush. If the human spends a pick on Charismatic, we're out of luck, they'll use that to avoid a war with the Myrran even if towers break. (not to mention, you have the stronger units, so you have the upper hand in diplomacy. Economy matters in an actual war if it drags out, but in diplomacy you don't say "our banks will obliterate you", you say "our missiles will obliterate you" instead, and the rush race is the one in position to say that.)

[Seravy]

Updating the current state. We most definitely do not want 1c, as we want towers to get breached regardless of Myrran AI realm, and we don't want uncommon Prosperity. (makes rush economy even better)

0. Planar Travel tier
We already know this will have to be late rare or early very rare. Probably the latter, since "late" isn't a thing we can enforce in the existing research system, anyone can click to research it as their first rare, and unless the RP cost is on par with a very rare, it will not be enough to prevent that.

1. Tower blocking. 
a., Tower blocking is desired and absolute. Planar Travel shouldn't exist.
b., Tower blocking is desired but not absolute. Planar Travel should exist, in Arcane, but the AI should use it rarely, probably on-demand on doomstacks of 9 units only. Planar Travel spell should be expensive to justify low AI use in the eyes of the human player. Optional : Difficulty level can increase the frequency of using this spell.
c., Tower blocking is desired but not absolute. Planar Travel should exist but limited to Life wizards.
d., Tower blocking is not desired at all. Planar Travel should exist, the AI should use it frequently and it should be Arcane.

2.  Method of Travel
a., Planar Travel for entire stack
b., Plane Shift

3. Planar Travel items
a., Keep the item power, as a Create Artifact tier. Effect works on entire stack. (AI would still be unable to use it.)
b., Remove the item power and add something new (probably for the Death realm which has the fewest item powers still)

4. Shadow Demons
a., Keep them as is (makes them come an entire tier too early for planar movement)
b., remove Planar Travel ability
c., Move up to rare (probably need to raise stats and be a higher end rare. As AI is strongly reliant on this unit this would be quite bad )
d., other?

5. Strict planar access
a., Neither human nor AI players are allowed to break towers before turn 200
b., The AI isn't allowed to break towers before turn 200 unless broken by the human. (current)
c., Neither human nor AI players are allowed to break towers before <condition> unless someone else already did. (need to come up with a good condition)

[Seravy]

As it seems inevitable to make Planar Travel Arcane, we should look at the options to replace.

Magic spirit - Obviously not.
Summoning Circle - Obviously not.
Dispel Magic -  Obviously not, it's critical to keep buffs in check.
Disenchant Area - This would make sense as a Life spell - it's similar to Consecration but weaker. However if we do this, we'll probably need to rebalance city curses with the assumption that most wizards can't dispel them. It also means the distinction between curse happy AI and other AI will be much less - even if curses are less frequent, if they aren't dispelled, eventually all cities will have one anyway.
Heroic Shout - I would hate to lose our only hero specific spell in the game, albeit it might be better to have a hero specific spell that's less offense and more defense. Heroic Shout is decent but only while the hero has very low armor, after that they naturally counter multifigure units without the spell. Original game has Recall Hero which was a defensive effect, but not a very well balanced one. Ideally a spell that has a defensive/healing effect that doesn't stack with Life magic, and is weaker than it would be best for this slot.
Detect Magic - Could be fine as a Sorcery common instead maybe? Without Spell Blast, knowing the enemy spells is less critical. Unfortunately it's also needed to play against Spell Blast, by revealing when it's safe to cast a spell (sorcery wizard casting something expensive) so better kept as Arcane. Doing it means losing AEther Sparks as well, to make room.
Enchant Item - necessary
Summon Hero - necessary
Move Fortress - AI can't use it anyway, and with no effect on starting race, it's only useful to avoid getting attacked by the AI (not particularly desired, players should aim to defend their capital, not escape) and reducing range penalties (very useful, high impact effect that's sometimes critical in high difficulty games. Removing this makes Channeller a much more valuable retort.)
Disjunction - necessary
Create Artifact - necessary
Summon Champion - necesary

Move Fortress looks the best spell to replace, followed by Detect Magic and Disenchant Area and Heroic Shout. The rest we cannot even consider replacing.


So we have this new choice to make now :
6. Planar Travel should replace
a., Move Fortress
b., Disenchant Area
c., Detect Magic
d., Heroic Shout

Unless replacing Disenchant Area, we'll need to come up with a new uncommon Life spell to fill PT's slot. (Unless we want whatever we removed to be a Life spell. MF probably makes some sense, DM not so much, HS rather not, Life doesn't need even more hero spells...)