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OwlFancier posted:If your griffon riders can take on an army three times their size made of pikes and archers, you're using much better riders than I can field. They can take on a army twice it's size, which with the hex mechanics is all you need. I'm playing on normal map with normal resources. You can also use different t3 units from other races or your class, but that's not a serious choice. I checked shadow walker and they have no weaknesses. they can be dispelled, but only with a 19% chance, using up the casting points and spell usage for a turn. Baron Porkface fucked around with this message at 11:48 on Apr 3, 2014 |
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Apr 3, 2014 11:41
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Baron Porkface posted:I'm trying to get a random map done and it's such a slog. I'm ready to write this game off as a disappointment. My suggestion is to write that game off as a win and move on to another class/race combination. I won my first game (human sorc) after beating my first two rivals and having half the map under my heel, yet i still had to alpha strike one of my allies enemies in order to get a unified win. Honestly if you're ever bored and you control more then a third of the map, you've basically won anyway. It would be nice if in a future expansion we see alternative victory conditions (Doomsday weapons, territory/population control, an alliance between the giants, fae and other neutrals leading to some kind of golden age...) but until then, the bigger maps are going to get dull towards the end, i noticed it towards turn 120 as well. But for you, baron porkface, i humbly recommend you start a medium 5/6 race map as a High Elf Dreadnought with advanced options set to high starting resources. Go to town with the experience you gathered from that first game. 
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Apr 3, 2014 11:42
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Gerblyn posted:Yep, pretty much. I asked the guy made the map and he advised: Avoid harder independent fights, clear mana/gold mines and build forts to start using them, recruit units from Inns and then capture an enemy city. This map is crazy hard - I take one of his cities around turn 33~, but lose most of my units in the proccess. It takes 7 turns to absorb due to alignment conflicts. Before it can finish, the guy sends in a 3 six stacks army with several archon titans and a ton draconian fliers with a couple trebuchets, and on the very first round of manual casts Static Electricity (static shield on every one of his units + 20% lightning vuln on all of mine). I just hit forfeit at that point, I probably need to start over again.  I ended up taking on pretty much every single independent pack on the left side of the map though, even the tough ones (that flame tank can take on almost anything with my dreadnought repairing it) so maybe I should aim to rush it instead of being slow nad careful.Edit : yep - I was more afraid of his early cities than I should have been - if you give him 25+ turns he starts getting insane, but you can take out one of his cities with your starting army - just capture the forts on the way. Gerblyn posted:Less than 10. This is why Orcs can be so easy to kill if you have the right units. For a "strong" unit, you want resistance 12+ if you can get it. Is this the same formula for single shot weapons? (pistol/musket/blunderbuss/draconian spit?) - so 30 damage with 10 defense, 31 damage with 9 defense? Or do they get more of a bonus/penalty for each point? Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 12:16 on Apr 3, 2014 |
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Apr 3, 2014 11:44
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Baron Porkface posted:They can take on a army twice it's size, which with the hex mechanics is all you need. I'm playing on normal map with normal resources. You can also use different t3 units from other races or your class, but that's not a serious choice. Surely the hex mechanics make that less relevant? Like I said, twice its size is expected, because they cost at least twice as much, if not three or four times as much. Even if it kills your entire army, so what? you should have one or two more right behind it who can beat them up some more. You should have killed at least a couple in the first fight so now they have to fight the battle again with less health/fewer numbers. Health takes a while to heal back so even losing for a turn will let you keep the damage you do. T1 units are incredibly cheap, is the point I'm making. They cost 4 gold per turn to upkeep, and they can be produced at level two or three veterancy as well, giving them even more power for their price. I had a look at shadow stalkers and they're certainly good, however they have no lightning or fire protection, so any elf or sorcerer can spam lightning at them, dwarves and draconians can use their fire units, and dreadnoughts have flame tanks, I would love to see flame tanks in use against them, not least because they explode on death, and the stalkers are melee units. They're also magical origin and monsters, warlords and dreadnaughts can both I think build units or get buffs that specifically target those. Also creation magic has bane of the unnatural, which gives your unit 5 spirit damage against them, another thing they don't appear to be at all resistant to, so theocrats should have a fun time with them. Also, looking up gryphon riders, they cost four times more to maintain than T1 pikes, and will take 5 extra damage from pikes, their main threats are their mobility and first strike which makes them hard to attack, however attacking them with your own first strike units will negate that, and using pikes will give you a very nice damage boost due to them being mounted and flying. If you could somehow add blight damage to your pikes, you'd be golden. They don't have especaially high armour, so just hit them a bunch and they'll die. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 11:58 on Apr 3, 2014 |
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Apr 3, 2014 11:53
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The long, tedious movement will make it difficult to spam t1 units against t3 And when I think about it, spamming hordes of pikemen and archers isn't very fantasy. Baron Porkface fucked around with this message at 12:10 on Apr 3, 2014 |
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Apr 3, 2014 12:05
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For low level units, priests are almost always a good thing to have around. Storm Sisters stunning touch can ruin a monsters day, for example, a stunned Shadow Stalker is toast. Wolpertinger posted:This map is crazy hard - I take one of his cities around turn 33~, but lose most of my units in the proccess. It takes 7 turns to absorb due to alignment conflicts. Before it can finish, the guy sends in a 3 six stacks army with several archon titans and a ton draconian fliers with a couple trebuchets, and on the very first round of manual casts Static Electricity (static shield on every one of his units + 20% lightning vuln on all of mine). I just hit forfeit at that point, I probably need to start over again. Designer says you really need to rush to the first city, turn 33 is way too late. He's saying you shoud be able to get it by turn 10. If you need help, there's also a Giant's Keep south east of the first city. If you can conquer it, or do a quest for them to get a T4, that might help Wolpertinger posted:Is this the same formula for single shot weapons? (pistol/musket/blunderbuss/draconian spit?) - so 30 damage with 10 defense, 31 damage with 9 defense? Or do they get more of a bonus/penalty for each point? Yeah, it's the same formula for all damage calculations: damage = 10 + Attack Strength - Defense(or Resistance for non-physical attacks)
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Apr 3, 2014 12:06
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Baron Porkface posted:The long, tedious movement will make it difficult to spam t1 units against t3 Draconian Elders will do well against Shadow Stalkers, since the stalkers have no protection against fire damage. But I agree that calling it a win and restarting might be a more fun idea.
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Apr 3, 2014 12:09
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I do have a feature request actually, it'd be nice if you could set it up so that the starting settler is exempt when you disable city founding. Basically it'd be neat to be able to pick your starting location but not have city sprawl as an option. Also if the random map generator would remember my settings between sessions, and all of the settings too, not just some of them. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 12:18 on Apr 3, 2014 |
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Apr 3, 2014 12:15
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So, Shadow Stalkers: They're HP 60 MV 32 Def 11 RES 10 units, With an Attack that does 10 Ph/12 Blight and saps physical strength on hit. They're also floating and get massive damage boosts from flanking attacks. They are completely immune to blight and frost damage, and so resistant to physical damage that you can forget about it. So what you need is a good source of Fire, Shock, or Spirit damage. They only have average res and will go down faster then you'd think. As a Draconian(?) Druid, you will want lots of Elders backed by summoned magical animals with elemental damage. The absolutely worst thing you can do against them is mass flyers, the Shadow Stalker will just laugh off their melee attacks and tear them apart. Summoning in general is a big part of playing a Druid, you aren't taking full advantage of the class if you aren't leaning on those heavily.
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Apr 3, 2014 12:18
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madmac posted:So, Shadow Stalkers: Also Summon Gargantuan animal is cheaper than summon Horned God and get get you a ton of amazing and diverse tier 3/4 units. Especially Shock Serpents.
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Apr 3, 2014 12:22
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Gerblyn posted:Less than 10. This is why Orcs can be so easy to kill if you have the right units. For a "strong" unit, you want resistance 12+ if you can get it. I've just started paying more attention to this after a crazy turn around. I was in a small multiplayer game where I was going to lose my throne, a 6 man army against my 1 Dwarven Crusader. I thought I was going to lose it but then I realized he only had physical damage. 15 defense + 2 from Bless + 3 from Stone Skin, flanks were doing 2-3 damage to him. It was ridiculous and so fun.
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Apr 3, 2014 12:28
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So that's another reason why Musketeers are so drat good and need that one turn cooldown - with such a huge spike of damage they can pierce even the thickest defense. Man, dreadnought is such a fun class. Nother question : When you use a fortress to capture a resource that gives production/happiness does it go to the nearest city? Or do those only work if you build a city on them? Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 12:37 on Apr 3, 2014 |
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Apr 3, 2014 12:32
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Baron Porkface posted:And when I think about it, spamming hordes of pikemen and archers isn't very fantasy. Neither are musketeers and giant steam-driven landships, and yet, here we are!
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Apr 3, 2014 12:32
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I would point out that a good portion of the second lord of the rings movie revolves around a wizard's desire to spam orc pikemen and crossbowmen.
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Apr 3, 2014 12:36
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Its called Fantasy! ya ingrates! Its meant to be fantastical!  In all seriousness and unrelated to this thread, it does grind my gears  abit to hear people complain that riflemen (or anything really) shouldn't be in a fantasy setting, its gosh darned fantasy, it comes in many flavours.OwlFancier posted:I would point out that a good portion of the second lord of the rings movie revolves around a wizard's desire to spam orc pikemen and crossbowmen. The best description. Also Orc Bombers apparently, no one told Saruman that's a goblin only unit. Baron Porkface posted:The long, tedious movement will make it difficult to spam t1 units against t3 This might help with that:  Unless i misunderstood you. Gerblyn, a quality of life request, would it be possible to have messages that only have the choice of "Close" (such as, "You Looted X Gold from this Mine." or "You attacked... and won!" recaps) be setup so that pressing enter accepts that? Its a small niggle but hey, might as well ask. Thyrork fucked around with this message at 12:56 on Apr 3, 2014 |
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Apr 3, 2014 12:47
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Wait, do Elven musketeers get the racial no-long range penalty? That's insane if true and I have to try it out ASAP
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Apr 3, 2014 12:53
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A lot of Tier 1/2 units are, if not strong in general at least very cost effective in their niche. Don't write off Elven Archers or Orc Greatswords before you try them. Also, let me do a more complete list of racial bonuses now that I've had a bit more time digging through the tome of wonder. Humans: All Units get Mariner, no bonuses or penalties. Human Cities gain +5 Production and prefer Fertile Plains. Elves: All units get Forestry, +1 Res and +1 Physical or Shock Ranged Attacks, and 20% Blight Vulnerability. Also all bow units upgrade to longbows, which are awesome because they don't have range penalties. Elven Cities get +3 research and prefer Forests. Orcs: All Units get Nightvision, +5 HPs, +1 Melee, -1 Res and Phy Ranged Attacks. Their Cities prefer barrens but don't get a bonus. Dwarves: All Dwarf Units get +1 Def, +1 Res, 20% Blight Resist, Cave Crawling, Mountaineering, and Night Vision, but cost 10% more. Cities prefer mountain terrain but also don't get a bonus. Goblins: All Goblins get +40% Blight Resist, -5 HPs, Cave Crawling, Night Vision and Wetlands Walker, and cost 10% less. Cities prefer Wetlands and get +10% population growth. Draconians: Fast Healing, Fire Protection 20% Frost Weakness 20% and Cities get +3 mana and prefer Lava or Barrens. One question though. Are those racial bonuses still tiered with city level like in the old games or is it just a flat +3 or whatever per city? What I mean is, in the older AoW games Human cities would gain anywhere from +5 to +15 production depending on city size. I take it that's no longer the case? madmac fucked around with this message at 12:58 on Apr 3, 2014 |
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Apr 3, 2014 12:54
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Triskelli posted:Wait, do Elven musketeers get the racial no-long range penalty? That's insane if true and I have to try it out ASAP Please tell me how this works, I'm saving my Elf Dreadnought for a match against a friend once he gets his router working, and I'm eager to demonstrate the glories of Elf Industrialism.
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Apr 3, 2014 12:58
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Tomn posted:Please tell me how this works, I'm saving my Elf Dreadnought for a match against a friend once he gets his router working, and I'm eager to demonstrate the glories of Elf Industrialism. The lack of ranged penalty comes from "Shoot Longbow", which is something that Elven Archers and Hunters get. It doesn't work for musketeers, though Elven ones do still get +1 ranged damage.
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Apr 3, 2014 13:04
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Gerblyn posted:The lack of ranged penalty comes from "Shoot Longbow", which is something that Elven Archers and Hunters get. It doesn't work for musketeers, though Elven ones do still get +1 ranged damage. If you want though you can forge items which give your heroes the seeker ability, which does negate both cover and range penalties, then give them guns. That should work handily. Druids also get a spell that does that, but druids obviously don't get guns unless you could maybe hire them from an inn or something or mind control them.
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Apr 3, 2014 13:22
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OwlFancier posted:Druids also get a spell that does that, but druids obviously don't get guns unless you could maybe hire them from an inn or something or mind control them. Seeker is an Air Adept spell, so you can get it if you want!
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Apr 3, 2014 13:26
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Drone bombing was mentioned earlier. Do Flame tanks do more damage on death? They can AoE on their way in, are tanky enough that several units will have to gang up on them to kill them, might survive long enough to get a 2nd attack off, and can be rezzed by a Dreadnought spell to either keep them or have a 2nd AoE attack/Deathsplosion 
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Apr 3, 2014 13:31
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Gerblyn posted:Seeker is an Air Adept spell, so you can get it if you want! Oh! Well... gently caress that then I'm taking air on all my dreadnaughts. Thought it was my druid given their hunter boner but I did take air with that druid so that's probably it.
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Apr 3, 2014 13:33
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The Flame Tank Deathsplosion is stronger then the drones, I'm pretty sure.
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Apr 3, 2014 13:34
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So a fire adept can turn all ground tropical radiating out from your cities, terraform them to the proper type (i.e. humans to fertile), then use the fire skill that makes tropical/volcanic ground liked by all targeted cities. Why yes, I'd like 700 happiness from terrain. Also, with every structure + metropolis, cities grow in a perfect 7 tile hexagon in every direction. If you want to super sperg it, you can make them interlock this way. Best done with a human dreadnought IMO since you get a bunch of passive production. Which brings me back to my earlier question: Is there an ability/spell to remove city ruins from the map entirely? Mazz fucked around with this message at 14:07 on Apr 3, 2014 |
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Apr 3, 2014 13:55
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I think I just discovered the most obnoxious possible tactic against the AI, heh. Build 5 draconian flamers or elders + 1 main hero with Fire Mastery. Attack enemy city. First round : Fire halo self. Second round : Cast Hellfire, doing 50 fire damage to all units. However, all your units are immune. Use your flamers/elders to pick off one or two units as they walk towards you. Flee from the map. Wait one turn for more mana. Repeat.
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Apr 3, 2014 14:33
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There's some weird AI diplomacy stuff going on here. Guy I made peace with at the start of the game keeps invading my borders again and again. Doesn't look like he was doing anything in particular, in fact he was in the middle of a war on the other side of the map but he kept sending 1 unit past my borders every turn. Ended up with -5200 relation because of it and he doesn't seem to want to do anything about this apparent hatred of me. Is this because he's pure good so won't declare war until it's just him and me or because he's in the middle of a war and he's going to turn his units onto my cities the second it's over?
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Apr 3, 2014 14:37
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There's only one thing really hampering my enjoyment of the game - I get consistent worsening FPS drops in battles as they go on. They start off just fine but the framerate deteriorates further and further the longer a battle lasts, going down to 3-4 fps by the end of particularly long sieges. Framerate resets to normal once the battle is over. Seems like a memory leak issue but I'm assuming this has been noted already - any word on fixes for this kind of thing?
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Apr 3, 2014 14:54
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Wolpertinger posted:I think I just discovered the most obnoxious possible tactic against the AI, heh. Build 5 draconian flamers or elders + 1 main hero with Fire Mastery. Attack enemy city. First round : Fire halo self. Second round : Cast Hellfire, doing 50 fire damage to all units. However, all your units are immune. Use your flamers/elders to pick off one or two units as they walk towards you. Flee from the map. Wait one turn for more mana. Repeat. Meh too much work. Cast Chaos Rift and just stand back. They either get hosed by the lighting while you get more and more dudes or they rush you. Bonus points if you can cast static electricity to give them all lightning weakness and all your dudes static shield. [e] On a related note, does the age of magic spell have a hidden effect of making spells cheaper on top of the extra casting points? When my leader was in battle I could cast chaos rift for 25 (normally 100 points).
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Apr 3, 2014 15:07
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While the numbers are off, could it be related to having your leader present vs not? (cost of spells are doubled without your leader)
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Apr 3, 2014 15:15
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DrManiac posted:[e] On a related note, does the age of magic spell have a hidden effect of making spells cheaper on top of the extra casting points? When my leader was in battle I could cast chaos rift for 25 (normally 100 points). There's an effect called "Wild Magic" that halves the casting cost of all spells in Tactical Combat, I think that might have caused it?
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Apr 3, 2014 15:17
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Wolpertinger posted:So that's another reason why Musketeers are so drat good and need that one turn cooldown - with such a huge spike of damage they can pierce even the thickest defense. Man, dreadnought is such a fun class. Dreads for life. Started an Adventure-Flow game on a Very Large map. Turn 120, and I've brought one of the 4 AI (the only one I've met) to the surrender table. Time to write this one off as a win and restart on a map that doesnt make RTW2 turn-times look quick :P Really overestimated my crappy PC's handling of gargantuan maps. Juggernauts kick major rear end, but having them take 12 turns to get to the frontline isnt working out for me. But seeing Musketeers drop those cocky-assed enemy Heroes in a cloud of smoke and shot never gets old!
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Apr 3, 2014 15:18
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Gerblyn posted:There's an effect called "Wild Magic" that halves the casting cost of all spells in Tactical Combat, I think that might have caused it? I don't think so since I was in a bunch of battles trying to take as many cities as possible with my leader. The cost also went back to normal when age of magic was dispelled. This was on the second mission of the campaign so I might have missed something story related though.
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Apr 3, 2014 15:23
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Dandywalken posted:Juggernauts kick major rear end, but having them take 12 turns to get to the frontline isnt working out for me. But seeing Musketeers drop those cocky-assed enemy Heroes in a cloud of smoke and shot never gets old! I think it might be in Expansion, but there's a skill called Advanced Logistics that drops movement down to two on roads. So even if we don't have access to iron horses you still should keep a good transport network running.
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Apr 3, 2014 15:39
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Turin Turambar posted:Lower the AI cheats, then you don't have the need of making it dumber! You are adorable! Tell me more about how you program ai!
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Apr 3, 2014 15:53
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Triskelli posted:I think it might be in Expansion, but there's a skill called Advanced Logistics that drops movement down to two on roads. So even if we don't have access to iron horses you still should keep a good transport network running. It's in Avatar, everyone gets it, and it's always researchable: Basic Seafaring -> Advanced Seafaring -> Advanced Logistics
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Apr 3, 2014 15:56
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One thing I'd love to see would be an option to increase research times, as well as some way to make it take longer to access higher tier units. I think it would be great to have more of a feeling of progression to the game - early wars fought with the mentioned hordes of spearmen and archers and a slow gradual escalation of force until all sides are summoning demons from hell and tearing the space-time apart, and all that. As things are now you can get access to your best racial units quite quickly if you really focus on it, so there is no real sense of accomplishment when you are finally able to field your top tier units. Maybe linking high tier unit production facilities to research could help? Admittedly this is mostly a problem on larger maps, where it feels like you've researched and built everything before you even find the last opponent. Maybe increasing the upkeep costs for high tier units a bit could be an idea, making them less spammable and more of a tradeoff to use? But admittedly, I've just played around on the lower difficulties this far so I don't know it this is as much of an issue on higher levels 
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Apr 3, 2014 16:22
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Nah I pretty much agree with you. I think income in general needs to be reduced by say, 50% (or costs increased by 2x, whichever is easier to do). Even with only a few cities next to a few resource nodes you can really start cranking things out too fast and be researching crazy quickly. Less income means less numbers of units which means less micromanaging, fewer and more important battles, helps make T1/2 units more attractive, and larger maps stay more interesting. Of course a side effect of that would likely be making hero units seem even better, so you might need to adjust how much XP it takes for them to level up too. Basically I just want a slider on the advanced options screen to adjust the costs of everything up or down. You could split it into individual sliders (gold, mana, research, xp), or just have an overall 'game speed' option like Civ 4 has.
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Apr 3, 2014 17:16
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How do you retreat in combat? I thought the arrows on the far end of my side would do it, but I can't find anything to do after moving on top of them.
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Apr 3, 2014 17:23
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MrBims posted:How do you retreat in combat? I thought the arrows on the far end of my side would do it, but I can't find anything to do after moving on top of them. Are you the defender? Because only the attacker can retreat in combat. Otherwise, yeah, you should just be able to move your units onto the arrows on the ground...
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Apr 3, 2014 17:27
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