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As a French person I feel like it's my duty to explain strikes to you. - AdrienIer |
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Test games played
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(August 27th, 2018, 02:37)Sapher Wrote: Hi. You're pretty quick with retort, spellbook and spell selection, must have repeated that quite a number of times to get adamantium, power and a food resource 
Unfair. I know all my selections long before I click 'new game', including retorts, spells, books, and races. And I've played so many times, I know exactly where on the screen they are (including where to place my mouse for a given number of books),and so I generally go from clicking 'new game' to naming my first city in about 20 seconds.
(August 27th, 2018, 10:30)Bahgtru Wrote:(August 27th, 2018, 02:37)Sapher Wrote: Hi. Yea, i played a few times before recording to establish my strategy. But it dosnt need much luck. I picked rich world and Myrran so chances for adamantium are very high. I dont care if it will be in my first city or somewhere nereby, because i still have to waste a lot of turns researching lycantropy and that gives enough time to build new city with adamantium. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8l4T5x5kkw Second part where i banish my first opponent. 
My game is done.
It's a loss, I tried everything but spell warded magician cities are unbeatable. 9 demon lords? Holy Word and creature Binding tear them apart, I'd need like two such stacks to beat one city (as the first turn goes to holy word so no supreme light and thing that die first turn stay dead). I could actually win that way, but let's not waste another 20 hours on doing that...I did check and his spell research was very slow, he did have 2/3 of SoM done, but still needed like 300 turns for the last 1/3 (as he was spending 100% power income on mana production to keep up with the war.) So here is the list of my notes on what might need change. 1.Wave at higher cost (from the Death thread), not sure how much actually. Even at 70 or 75 it's still fairly spammable, but we can't really make it cost 120 either. Reaper is .318 cost effectiveness, to be worse than that assuming 20 average damage, cost needs to be 63 or higher but we want the difference to be significant so probably around 90 MP. Which is entirely too expensive for a direct damage spell that does...usually less than 2 doom bolts worth of damage at the same rarity with conditions? Although it IS twice the damage in one turn... 2.Shadow Demons at 6 resist (death thread) 3.Manticores, is the 7 resistance on these intentional? They are really easy to possess and Minotaurs already have that flaw, both having it is kinda excessive? 4.AI used Entangle against an entirely noncorporeal stack, that has to be a bug 5.Remove Storm Giant+Supreme Light from the AI's allowed starting spell list (see previous posts) 6.Demon Lords do way too much turn 1 damage? It's 24 damage per demon lord, so the enemy army has to be all 30+ health units to not lose on the first turn against a demon lord stack, and such an army is unrealistic outside of a fortress. Even if the AI does have very rares, it usually won't be 9 in a single stack. Losing Demon Lords on turn 1 does prevent some of this damage though but not much can actually kill a demon lord in a single turn (aside from spell warded cities and attacking into powerful ranged stacks like all storm giants or colossus). 7.Sligers, do we need them to be able to melee? Seeing how Hadriex uses them to beat down unicorns and giant spiders, I have doubts. I mean, with enough buffs they are pretty much the best melee normal unit in the game even though they are supposed to be ranged only. If they had 0 base melee, they'd not gain any from buffs and would be unable to do that. 8.Maybe we want to reduce the frequency of Hydras in lairs and nodes and towers? I find them fairly often and they are both extremely easy to kill for the human and near impossible for the AI. Every single other monster is more balanced in that regard. 9. Maybe we need to nerf Spell Ward? I mean Supreme Light aside, ANY regenerating stack behind Spell Ward is pretty much unbeatable unless you are playing the unwarded realms. Of course Supreme Light and just having Life in general makes it a lot worse due to all the buffs, but probably even without Life it would be difficult, imagine a stack of Troll Magicians if you can't cast spells and can't use fantastic creatures (well, you can, but creature binding, banish, or if mixed realm, massacre, holy word, etc will happen so even a stack of 9 might not actually do it. They also lose a ton of defense and you often can't buff them either due to suppress magic, or dispelling wave) 10. Spell Blast and Suppress Magic are fine on their own but when combined, you just can't cast anything period. That's not fun if it happens early. You need like 400-500 casting skill and a very rare summon that costs that much to be able to get around it. Don't think much can be done about this though, besides not letting the sorcery wizard get ahead in research to have it early. It's not an early very rare pick for research at least, so that reduces the chance of it happening. Maybe the AI should be specifically told to research something else first it turn<X? I think that's all.
August 27th, 2018, 20:17
(This post was last modified: August 27th, 2018, 20:21 by Nelphine.)
Shadow demons at resist 6? That seems.. crazy low.. I don't think any uncommon summon should be THAT low. But I also think fantastic summons should be higher resist in general, so clearly we have a difference of opinion here.
Wave could be higher, but... I don't think it should be 90 or anything. 70 maybe. Realistically.. I'd leave it at 66, and change the other numbers. Re-look at the goal of the spell and tweak. Personally, I don't think it should be anywhere near as strong against low targets EXCEPT when targetting heroes (in particular, destroying very rares seems simply wrong). But that's because heroes are too strong, not because I think heroes SHOULD be singled out that way. I think I'd much rather nerf wave immensely, and do drastic changes to heroes, rather than make a rare spell cost 70+. Demon lords do 24 damage? And.. buffed slingers still do 45+. I don't see the problem. I can get dozens of stacks of slingers before you get demon lords. Or you could use efreets with warp lightning. Or any of the other realm powerhouse units (gorgons with survival instinct + iron skin, invisible storm giants, etc). Demon lords may be too powerful, but their damage output is NOT why. Manticores: I've already commented on this that I think practically all armorers guild and fantastic stables units are too fragile. So yes, manticores should be more... but not because manticores are bad, but rather, all similar units are bad. Slingers: Why should magicians be able to melee? And shadow demons, that seems silly too. And what about cockatrices or chaos spawn? No, slingers should keep melee. If they're too strong, nerf number of figures in the unit, don't change core mechanics. Multi-figure units are already the source of a lot of other problems, so we if we want to address these things, we should address them, not try to put bandaids on things like melee 1. I completely agree with reducing number of hydra (although it's amusing that you can destroy hydra, but can't scratch supreme light magicians; i know i know, there are lots of very good reasons for this, and I agree with you, but it's still amusing given the cost difference). Spell Ward requires special units to defeat. City units often wreck them, but they usually require very specific spell support, which is often only available via artifacts or very particular heroes (for instance, ranger hero with invisibility item with war mammoths will destroy most anything that sorcery can get). However, spell ward isn't a spell ward; it's a REALM ward, and it completely shuts down mono realms. Honestly, we may want to make it SPELL ward and not have any effect on summons at all. Spell Blast + Suppress Magic. Yeah this is a nightmare. Spell blast is already a nightmare and while it has good reason to exist, maybe we should make it an arcane spell, and make it ONLY target spell of mastery. That way everyone CAN get it (making spell of mastery far more difficult to use in general), but it loses almost all of the unfun aspects. Make it a very rare tier arcane spell that costs like 15000-25000 to research, so that people who rush research can actually learn spell of mastery before the AI gets spell blast. But that still leaves suppress magic, which, while flavorful, is particularly awful to play against. But I've always hated 'counter' style play (and as such, gave up on MtG because of blue decks many many years ago). Not sure what to do about that.
Do note Shadow Demons are naturally immune to all resistance targeting spells and effect except Exorcise until rares, as I mentioned in the Death thread, so this is a change targeted at making that better. (and the rares wipe them out either way. Ok, Cockatrices are uncommon but at -4 save it already completely wipes them out)
Changing heroes and directly nerfing wave are not an option. We are 100% satisfied with the amount of damage it deals, but not with the number of times it can be cast and the cost efficiency. (Yes, the damage is 50-70% more, compared to a Doom Bolt or Reaper Slash or Warp Lightning. It's still much less than Flame Strike. Flame Strike is still a much better spell. But it's irrecoverable, gets stronger if there are more targets (peaks at 3-5 targets) in total damage, and it can bypass a whole bunch of buffs WL cannot. So it has plenty of convenience features on top of being more damage/turn than those. Meaning for 50% more damage it should likely be 100% more cost. But that puts it at 90. Yes, changing heroes would be the best if we had that option but we don't. We already concluded there is no possible way to change heroes that works without completely breaking the entire system. It also HAS TO work on very rares. Heroes were only one of the design goals, being able to deal with buffed very rares was the other. What does a Death wizard do against an invulnerable Archangel or something equivalent? Other realms can generally fight that using...what exactly? I mean other than their own very rares. Why did we have this goal again? I think I asked this in the Death thread too but never got an answer. Was just a random person complaining they can't do anything against it? After 3 pages of discussion on how front loading damage is bad, I don't see how you can claim enough damage to wipe out 99% of the possible stacks in the game in a single turn is not a problem. Slingers ARE a problem, that's why they were also on the list. But Slingers can at least be countered by common spells and unit types (missile immunity/warp wood), nothing counters Demon Lords except Spell Ward.) For reference, a stack of 9 colossus kills less quickly than this. I guess 9 wyrms do it faster, but they have to melee, so they take damage and need to deal with flying. Everything else has to wait a turn to get close enough or deals far less damage. So Demon Lords are literally more than twice as good at this than anything else even though their design is to be a hard to kill, durable unit that summons things and overwhelms over time. Maybe Doom Bolt on them was a mistake. Originally they were so expensive 9 stacks were not really a viable thing but nowadays, it's simple to have that. Slingers - the core mechanic here is "more figures", not " must be able to melee" so that's what we are not going to change. Catapults can't melee. Cannons can't melee. Although idk, I think we had a discussion about this in the past and the conclusion was it's ok as is? Just don't remember why. Ok I guess the fact you need lionheart, flame blade and levels without barracks might be enough of a reason? It's kinda trivial for a Life wizard who has 2 Chaos books though. Spell Ward - one particular problem with this is, it always appears with Flying Fortress in pair. So no, Mammoths can't even enter to damage the city, let alone hit the units. You specifically need flying or ranged units that are extremely durable (my troll magician stack died in two turns!) and they have to do that without buffing (since dispel/suppress). I don't think such a unit even exists in the game. Maybe Nightmares? With adamant and orihalcon? This game had zero Dark Elf cities. Can't think of anything else, Doom Drakes and Pegasai also lasted for like no time at all. Couldn't even reach a single magician to attack it. By the way, same wizard might have Mass Invisibility, or summon Air Elementals or whatever, which are impossible to beat without spells.
August 27th, 2018, 21:24
(This post was last modified: August 27th, 2018, 21:27 by Nelphine.)
Eh, I don't think life needs anything to kill shadow demons. Get the strongest city range units and kill shadow demons. So, excorcise isn't a good reason to make shadow demons weaker.
No, you concluded you don't want to remove sources of hero armor/defense. I've proposed multiple times reducing those due to the extreme number of stackable buffs. My response to wanting to make wave 90 cost, is that it would be better, despite your desire to keep hero armor/defense sources relevant, to reduce those sources rather than make a rare spell cost 90. If you need a rare spell to cost 90, then you have a fundamental problem with that spell that needs to be changed. If the spell can't be changed in order to meet some other design goal (and no, very rares should be defeated by other very rares. I'm not sure why you think wave was required to do that) like defeating overpowered heroes, then you should look at the problem - in this case overpowered heroes - not make a rare spell that needs to be that expensive. (In fact, you could swap annihilate and wave? then wave COULD cost that much..) Slingers ARE a problem. But their melee ability has nothing to do with that. Their ability to melee is no more a problem than troll magicians. Yes, absolutely they can defeat some things in melee with enough buffs; but they should be able to do SOMETHING in melee, far more than the other 4 units I name. Sure cannons and catapults can't do anything in melee. I would be equally as fine giving them 1 melee as well - their operators are certainly not weaker than engineers. And.. it wouldn't matter, because they are 1 figure. Slingers are 8 figures - that's the only reason they can melee better than engineers. (Guess what? I can make engineers that defeat unicorns too.) And yes the last time we discussed slinger RANGE as a problem, yes, the decision was that warp wood/dispels/guardian wind are enough to overcome this. If you're throwing flame blade and lionheart and heroism on it, you've now got a unit that literally costs more than a storm giant - it's probably ok for it to kill some things in melee. Spell ward. War mammoths + ranger hero. Wow I totally got that wrong. I'm sorry, that should be 'Warrior Mage'. Very key to get the right hero! Giving ... warrior mage... invisibility was also specified for a reason. That's why my initial comment on this was about requiring very particular heroes and artifacts. Anyone 'can' do it, and they would crush those spell ward magicians you were worried about. But the very fact that I made a mistake as to which hero, shows just how specific it is. You can still do it though. But yes, in general I agree, that's TOO specific, which is why I would support spell ward being changed to have 0 impact on summons, nor would it affect buffs already cast on a unit.
August 27th, 2018, 21:29
(This post was last modified: August 27th, 2018, 21:38 by Nelphine.)
And the demon lords is exactly the same conversation as warp lightning. Every realm can do something like that. If someone gets a stack of 9 demon lords.. they SHOULD kill things. And guess what? Take out their doom bolt.. and.. they.. would kill all of those 'less than 30 health per unit' stacks with just as much ease, it would just take an extra combat round or two. And that still wouldn't be enough time for most magic to kill a single demon lord, so it wouldn't actually change the result. The doom bolts are NOT the issue with a stack of 9 demon lords.
This further goes to show why I don't consider any unit with less than 24 health to be viable. I literally won't plan around using them. So when you worry about things like supreme light magicians, to me, that isn't even a viable unit. I would never defend my cities with that. They literally shouldn't be relevant past the uncommon tier. (Which is also why I end up playing life all the time. They're the only realm that can reliably get units with both strong enough defense and strong enough offense that the AI can't bring a spell like spell ward out and just shut me down. I never, ever, want to play a game where if the AI get a lucky spell selection, I can't deal with it with my primary doomstack. Although Gorgons and Demon Lords also work. Interestingly, I don't consider Chaos to have anything that works, although Efreet obviously have some good things going for them; and I dislike Sorcery because I dislike the whole 'counter' style of play.)
Oh Warrior Mage. I actually did have that hero but never though of the possibility, yes, she does have Flight of course. Bleh, if I moved my artifact set on the hero the hero could have soloed the cities. I had the invisibility cloak, a doom staff, but if needed I also had a +6/+2 sword. The only problem was invisiblility and my only flight item went into the same slot, and generally 2 accessory heroes aren't really able to melee those crazy buffed magicians (they had 9 melee with +3 hit)
Don't think it actually helps the mammoths much as they are too slow to reach magicians, but the hero itself could have done all the work. If I swapped Annihilate and Wave, then Wave would be too late to be relevant against heroes. (At very rare, all the summons counter them anyway, to some extent.) I don't think I can reduce wave damage much as that would make it not work at all against 3+ targets, and this is ultimately meant to be a spell that's best to use on 1-5 targets (or fewer if they have extra high resistance), not something limited to only work against a single target. In the end I did use Annihilate a fair amount after that discussion, and even used Reaper slash a few times, since Wave is wasteful on mana in many cases. So maybe a small increase could do the trick. By "warp lighting" I think you mean Efreet. You are right but Demon Lords are exactly twice as much damage as Efreets. (They doom bolt for 12 AND shoot for 12 in the same turn. I gave them Quick casting to summon 2 demons, or doom bolt+summon, but they can doom bolt and shoot instead and their ranged attack was buffed so...now we have this. But it definitely wasn't what the unit is supposed to do.) Quote:it would just take an extra combat roundYep, that's exactly the problem, an extra combat round means one more enemy spell to deal with, and one more set of arrows, or other ranged attacks to take damage from (assuming the entire enemy army was ranged so we couldn't take all the ranged out first). It kinda defeats the purpose of having a durable, self-healing (life drain), immune to lots of stuff unit that can summon things and has lots of ammo if...the combat lasts 1 turn. Why summon demons if I can just win the battle? Really, the unit was designed to be used as a 1-3 per stack unit, and had a cost for that (1313 each) but the cost reduction breaks that and having 9 in a stack is not viable. So either way, even if front loading damage can be done by other units, the problem is this particular unit was not designed for that, especially not to the extend of being the best at it in the entire game (except for buffed things of course). I don't think Spell Ward needs to be 0 impact on summons but -4 resistance is probably way too much. (although Death has the least resistance summons in the game. If I had Colossus, I'd only lose 1/holy word and only 30% chance of creature binding so those could have won the battles much better. Chaos Great Drakes could have worked too although those die to the ranged attacks a lot so not really.) About very rare creature being required to fight very rare creatures, idk. What if you don't get one? Even with more spells in the 4th book that's not guaranteed. Life gets to buff their normal units high enough to beat very rares. Chaos can pretty much nuke anything with direct damage, unless regenerating, and with Apocalypse, even 9 stacks aren't safe. Nature...well, it has 3 summons so it will have one, and if not, Entangle is pretty decent at disabling enemy very rares and letting ranged normal units kill them. Even Gorgons and Earth Elementals beat very rares here. Sorcery can do mind storm+banish, or spell blast them. So everyone can solve very rares without having their own, except death. Death has Annihilate, which is still 0% chance to work with black prayer and eternal night if the target is buffed by anything at all, and still quite unreliable on many types otherwise. That's it, other than that, it can animate them to chain kill an entire stack but only if they can kill at least one. Anything too durable for Reapear Slash or too strong to keep the battle going is impossible. So I guess we did have a reason to want a spell that works against very rares. Wave is just a bit too good at it...
While editing the previous post, the upload of the last 3 parts of my game completed :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmRkGTBF...e=youtu.be https://youtu.be/K9SmTtHzF84 https://youtu.be/GNyxouLyIws So this was freaking 44 hours total without actually ending the game. OMG. |
