To be honest, I think dispelling wave and dispel magic both dispel too many spells for their cost (spend 50 mana, potentially dispel hundreds or thousands of mana worth of buffs.) I'm not sure how to rectify that as they're the only counter to buff strategies though. But buff strategies basically go 'oh you're not sorcery and don't have tons of magicians? I win'. Its very binary. (But my only solution is to make dispels much weaker against multiple spells, and then improve summons across the board for all uncommons or stronger).
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Test games played
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I think the current balance between dispels and buffs is fine. It's a strategy you can use to win if the enemy isn't Sorcery...and lose by using it if they are. It rewards the player who knows the game - indeed, in a binary way - very much like all other similar game mechanics, such as immunities do. It also happens to raise the stakes in diplomacy - being on good terms with the Sorcery wizard can enable you to use the strategy.
Meanwhile, I'm using the Archangels to hunt down boats loaded with troops - the AI is sending them because the island is the only place on Myrror where I have a city. This doesn't really get me anywhere but the loss on their side is so large it resulted in a good 15% drop on their graph. Later when I need to attack actual threats, those hundreds of additional units not being there will be a great deal. I was thinking about the "Primal Force" being too powerful now that costs are lower - you earn back the cost in only 30 turns now. However, the skill investment to cast it is not earned back, (or it takes like a hundred turn if you spend the produced power on SP) so I think it's fine. Ultimately, the military might of the unit earns you a lot more than the 20 power. I try to keep spellcasting in battle to the minimal necessary to keep the Archangels alive - but it still means I have to produce all mana now.
Already summoned enough Archangels to have a stack of 9 of them. I don't think anything can stop such a stack (although fighting warlocks will be inconvenient), so victory is gauranteed.
A few conclusions : -I had a surprisingly hard time for all but the end of the game, even though I got extremely favorable enemy wizards. (no heavy death, sorcery or chaos past early game. Only Nature and Life.) -Both enemy wizards had Call Lightning and it didn't feel relevant. Might need that buff to strength 9, or even 10. -Using stacks of 9 Archangels is fun, and at this cost it's actually affordable, before the change it took so long to summon them I probably wouldn't have had the patience to go for it. -However this means I don't need to think about using better tactics - I can just go for the most powerful one easily and without thinking. This could be different if the AI had similar stacks and I wouldn't have infinite time to do so - in that case 9 stacks of 1 Archangel+8 Berserkers could be necessary - the 9 very rare tactic is still slow and expensive compared to most other options. -Both wizards were non-cursing realms, but Maniacal. They didn't build strong doomstacks - best was 8 Nightmares+a hero. Even if they did cast Water Walking on Colossus to have them in a doomstack, due to their personality they were kept in garrisons. If I wasted another 50 turns, cities would have filled with them and they would have ended up in offensive stacks anyway, so it's mostly due to luck - if the Manaical was paired with realms that had curses, I wouldn't have been able to keep up in economy to get that archangels tack before that happened. Same if the difficulty ws impossible. -Regardless of Maniacal slowing the AI's offense this time, it might be worth considering to make the AI put water walking or equivalent on land based very rare creatures at a higher priority or even "on demand" to enable them for doomstack use. I feel the doomstack does a lot more for the AI than having 1-2 of the creatures in garrisons, and is the only way the AI can compete with the human player if both reached very creatures, but a Nature wizard can't build a doomstack - their creatures don't fly. (Everything in other realms except Hydra does.) -Getting rid of racial unrest through Move Fortress is kinda overpowered. It completely cancels out any unrest penalty you might have as soon as you control a Nomad (or other "friendly" race) city. It also has a huge negative side effect - on the "top 10" list your starting race gets replaced by the spell.
...meh, maybe too early for conclusions. The Chosen attacked the tower and it has 27 shields with +3 To Def after prayer. Nothing except the Archangel stack can fight that and they are several turns away.
...it wasn't all that far but it had the same speed as my stack. BY the time I was able to chase it down, I lost 3 cities, all razed. I did have a single Archangel in one - had no chance against the hero. If this hero with its "doom" stack made it through 15-20 turns earlier, I might have lost the game. the only reason I can think of why it wasn't included in the doomstack is, it probably didn't get buffed by Wraithform unit then. I might need to take a look at chances for intercontinental buffs on AI that can build ships, it might be better to increase it anyway to ensure the good units make it into the doomstack, colossus or otherwise. I believe the fewest Archangels capable of killing the hero would have been around 4-5 - Supreme Light included. It took about 7 attacks to kill the hero and most archangels got damaged down to red or instant killed in a single hit. thanks to Supreme Light I didn't actually lose anything. 
I wish I could face that with my bezerker hordes. 21 melee, 13 thrown, +5 to hit (with high prayer).
6 figures, that's an average of 10.4 hits per figure with thrown; he averages 12.6 blocked, so one unit would do what, 5 damage with thrown? Then melee would average 16.8 hits per figure, so ~30 damage? So 35 damage from the first unit of bezerkers first attack. With 7 HP each, he wouldn't kill the bezerkers, but I would only attack once per unit. But if he had invulnerability it would probably take two units to kill him. Maybe even 3. Admittedly, he has dispelling wave, so they would never keep that many buffs, and I didn't get spell lock. So, not actually foolproof. But it would take 3 of the 8 bezetkers keeping 2 buffs each (Lionheart and flameblade), and he would be dead. Not terrible odds
I destroy every city except the two enemy capitals. Those have 9 Colossus each. I tried 9 Archangels but it was ineffective, killed like 2 of the colossus at best. I decide to go for the Spell Of Mastery (40 turns).
Doesn't take long and a stack of 5 colossus attacks one of my cities...and the other wizard starts using Archangels. Ouch. They won't go down easily even when they are down to the last city.
Started the new game, 5 Chaos, 5 Nature, Conjurer, Alchemy.
Recording it, part 1 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvbcjBQH...e=youtu.be Also, the irony, ever since Youtube removed flash playback, I can't watch 90% of the videos on the site including my own. Only if I download them first, if they wanted people to not use their site, they are successful! |