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MrBims posted:Up to seven stacks can participate in a battle - the stack targeted to be attacked, and the stacks on every tile around it. If you move your stacks in pairs, you will have up to 12 units in a battle if one is attacked. If you move your stacks in triangles, you will have up to 18 units in a battle if one is attacked. 42 unit battles are pretty hilarious and epic, especially if you can get one to occur on the open field. So much glorious carnage. I do think T1/T2 units are fine, though. They obviously fall off a ton in the extreme late game, but you can go a long way with Elf Longbowmen, Draconian Elders, Musket Dudes, or Orc Black Knights. 4 Tier 1 Elf Archers can kill a Manticore Rider with ease. KnoxZone fucked around with this message at 14:37 on Apr 16, 2014 |
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Apr 16, 2014 14:34
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KnoxZone posted:42 unit battles are pretty hilarious and epic, especially if you can get one to occur on the open field. So much glorious carnage. You can technically have even more by summoning units in battle, right?
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Apr 16, 2014 14:37
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Deltasquid posted:You can technically have even more by summoning units in battle, right? Yep! Also, this is what a 42 man battle against a turtling Dreadnought looks like:  Many brave souls died in this fight.
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Apr 16, 2014 14:41
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MrBims posted:Up to seven stacks can participate in a battle - the stack targeted to be attacked, and the stacks on every tile around it. If you move your stacks in pairs, you will have up to 12 units in a battle if one is attacked. If you move your stacks in triangles, you will have up to 18 units in a battle if one is attacked. It's more of a concern to me in early game, where you need a good mix of T1-2 units that can fight while lacking the production ability to maintain multiple stacks. Past that, it all tends to become full stacks of the biggest and baddest units so a good army composition doesn't stay as relevant anymore.
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Apr 16, 2014 14:49
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Man, I've been playing Shadow Magic the last couple days, and it's weird how different it feels balancewise - somehow you never end up needing/wanting to stack ultimate units unless you already have an overwhelming advantage and just want to finish something off. No matter what, you pretty much never can knock a tier 4 equivalent under 4 turns to produce, and city fortifications are REALLY good at beating off even tons of high tiers with some good defenders and spells - I've had a single city with only about 12 units, three of them being heroes and the rest being horse archers/chieftains hold off at least 6-7 stacks that were almost entirely manticore riders and sphinxes, which was practically tier 4 spam (sphinxes being a 'tier 4'). Enchanted Walls, tower guards, the garrison enchant, + spells like double gravity and mass confusion really gently caress over overreliance on massive stacks to take down a city. A lot of the tier 4 units are just transports, too, which makes stacking them pointless. One thing I've noticed that's a big difference between them though is in AoW3 it's often a complete waste of time to try and use a status effect spell on a powerful high tier unit - they're more often than not immune or so resistant that you have like a 15% chance of it going off Even if it's like 35%, that's still way too risky to use your one spell per turn. In shadow magic the best way to take out nasty units is to paralyze them and curse them and blind them and freeze them and use all the nasty status effects you have, while in 3 only weaker units tend to be inflicted with those unless you're just really lucky. On the other hand one thing it doesn't have is the pressure to build a unit and attack instead of stop turtling - although it's a bit too fast right now I definitely think it's a positive to give you a reason to build a unit now instead of build the next upgrade. Shadow Magic has a larger variety of mid-lategame units that stay useful without being overwhelmed by ultimate units, but early and early-midgame units are pretty much completely ignored and are pretty much completely useless, unlike AoW3 irregulars which can be surprisingly useful for longer than you'd think, with their high mobility single shot ranged attacks, and zero production requirements, and many of the early tier1 archer units stay useful as well. Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Apr 17, 2014 |
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Apr 17, 2014 05:36
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I know this is probably pretty low on the totem pole of to-do but it would be pretty nice if we could set recruitable heroes to use our custom leaders instead of the default 50 all the time. I'd spend way too much time in the editor churning out awesome looking heroes if it meant I didn't have to have the same exact heroes in every single game.
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Apr 17, 2014 11:45
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Korhal posted:I know this is probably pretty low on the totem pole of to-do but it would be pretty nice if we could set recruitable heroes to use our custom leaders instead of the default 50 all the time. I'd spend way too much time in the editor churning out awesome looking heroes if it meant I didn't have to have the same exact heroes in every single game. Nothing wrong with having Per Notchson in your crew every other game. 
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Apr 17, 2014 11:56
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Gah, spent some time on the official forums and it's intolerable. If I hear any more pointless Tier 4 whining I will choke somebody. Lets talk about gameplay! strategy! Classes! Spells! Something that's actually interesting for a change. I tend to save playing this game for when I can actually set aside some time to be sucked into a black hole, as such I have to admit I haven't had a chance to really play the Sorc, Dreadnaught, or Warlord yet. So now that this game has been out for a bit, what are your favorite Classes/Strategies, and why? Also, is anyone still streaming this game or know of someone who is that's worth watching? Is anyone still playing multiplayer, and if so, how's that going?
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Apr 17, 2014 14:45
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But strategy is hard, waiting a 100 turns for tier 4s and then complaining on forums is easy! I've had the chance to give all classes some tries, so far I've had the easiest time with Warlords and Dreadnoughts. Theocrat clicks the least for me, though in part that might be because every time I pick one "mark of the heretic" is hidden behind multiple higher tier spells and without it the Theocrat feels like its missing one of its centerpieces. For Warlord, drat Orc Beserkers are pretty nuts, with an arena and the warlord's Melee Command ability they hit on par with some tier3s for a really early tier 2 price and upkeep. It's a nice early pressure package while waiting on the Warlord's economic bonusses and later bruisers. Not quite sure what kind of specializations are best for the Warlord, I like expander to boost your towns for them as I'm often too busy building units, maybe Creation for heal? EDIT: Can't believe I talked about an Orc Warlord without mentioning the insanity that is Thoroughbred Mounts with Black Cavalry- cavalry is arguably already the most influential unit in the game: the ability to move 1 or 2 hexes more per turn is huge in deciding momentum. Black Cavalry might be the best cavalry in the game while Thoroughbred Mounts is a huge bonus. If you're lucky enough to get it somewhat early on you'll probably win just by default. For the Dreadnought I've been messing around with the Goblins, fast growth, cheap prices and Mana Fuel Cells make it really easy to get that magical early game 1/turn window for tier 2s. Warg riders with their mobility are great cavalry to back up your swarms of little Musketeer dudes, feels like a real early game powerhouse. Ofcourse, at least Air 1 is pretty much mandatory on a Dreadnought, Seeker is just that good for some of their units. Deltasquid posted:Any combination of musketeers and pikemen/halberdiers. Gotta get my Tercio on. I do this too, style is everything man  .
Autsj fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Apr 17, 2014 |
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Apr 17, 2014 15:37
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It's kind of odd that there's no Domain of Water spell to make coastal cities happy. I guess it's a terrain type instead of a clime, but all the other affinities get a spell that's more useful, Creation in particular.
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Apr 17, 2014 15:51
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Any combination of musketeers and pikemen/halberdiers. Gotta get my Tercio on. EDIT: Autsj posted:I do this too, style is everything man  
Deltasquid fucked around with this message at 16:13 on Apr 17, 2014 |
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Apr 17, 2014 15:53
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Autsj posted:But strategy is hard, waiting a 100 turns for tier 4s and then complaining on forums is easy! Man, I really got to get an Orc game going. Everyone keeps posting cool combos for them I didn't even think of. Goblins are just really good in general. Sure, they start to fall off later in the game, but with cheap units, fast growth, and friggen Swarm Darters there's really nobody better for explosive starts. My main inhibitor with starting a Warlord game is decision parlysis, because of all the cool race/unit combos they have. Elf Mounted Archers/Monster Hunters? Dwarf Warbred and Phalanxes? Orc Berserkers and Black Knights? I know you can always diversify later but Dude tough choices. I find Theocrat really interesting, but they feel like more of a late game force. Definitely Order of Healing and Crusaders/Evangalists will get you through the mid-game, but almost all of their really potent stuff is combo based and there's no small amount of luck involved in getting the right reasearches to pop. It probably doesn't help that the most appealing races (Dwarves, Humans) are not exactly early-game powerhouses, either.
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Apr 17, 2014 16:43
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I cannot empathize with all of this t4 complaining having played through four missions of both campaigns and still haven't used/faced a single t4 unit. These people must really be sitting on their asses for this stuff to end up happening. I love all the weird synergies that somehow work, you know? Like a goblin theocrat, an orc rogue, or a dwarf sorcerer. Such fun stuff
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Apr 17, 2014 16:58
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Arrrthritis posted:I cannot empathize with all of this t4 complaining having played through four missions of both campaigns and still haven't used/faced a single t4 unit. These people must really be sitting on their asses for this stuff to end up happening. How did you manage to miss the tier 4 unit Gamblag has in his capital in the very first mission of the first campaign? I rushed straight there and it kicked my rear end.
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Apr 17, 2014 17:00
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Gort posted:How did you manage to miss the tier 4 unit Gamblag has in his capital in the very first mission of the first campaign? I rushed straight there and it kicked my rear end. Honestly, I barely noticed it on that level. It's just one Shrine and it's easy enough to slap around until it falls over if you don't leave yourself too open to the one-time AOE move. I spent some time completing sidequests for extra units but the whole mission was super-easy. None of the Tier 4 units are strong enough that you can't just clobber them with a handful of Tier 1 units if need be. Throw something actually good at them and it's even easier. Upgraded Assassins can like straight up two-shot most Tier 4 units with flanking Assassin Strikes. I've been using Class Tier 4 units in the campaigns (for funsies) but I have to actively stall to bring them out at all and even then they just speed up the mop-up phase a little. For a Druid especially Horned Gods are more of an expensive sidegrade over Summon Gartantuan Animal then anything important. The AOE lightning attack is really nice, though. That said, I think the Shrine is decently important for the Theocrat late game, just because they're a slow army without good ranged attacks for the most part.
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Apr 17, 2014 17:11
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Gort posted:How did you manage to miss the tier 4 unit Gamblag has in his capital in the very first mission of the first campaign? I rushed straight there and it kicked my rear end. Completely forgot about it, to be honest. So I guess I did encounter *one* t4 unit.
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Apr 17, 2014 17:29
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madmac posted:So now that this game has been out for a bit, what are your favorite Classes/Strategies, and why? I've been playing around a lot with early game openings on Empire Building (I feel that leads to the most interesting decision making in the early game, with an element of HoMM in trying to take strong neutral camps with minimally efficient force), so since you ask, I'll share. This is pretty much entirely on Emperor difficulty, 4 players, Medium map, Classic turns and with Heroes off (slider to 0 - mechanically they feel a bit extraneous to me, personal taste). With a different combination of starting settings, I suspect priorities change somewhat. As far as Race+Class combos go, my favourite so far is Human Sorcerer. The human racial units aren't the best - I think Elves are the winners in those terms (longbows are just ridiculous). However, on Empire Building mode (and perhaps only here, which explains why they feel a bit underwhelming in more developed starts), the Human +5 production per city is really good. Also, possibly the best contender Humans have for standout unit are Priests, which only require Shrines (a key building for Sorcerer anyway, since it adds both mana and the Mana Generation activity), and both the Sorcerer researchable unit buffs improve Priests. Fast expansion pairs extremely well with the Sorcerer. - You want to get high mana production up quickly so you can start summoning units and researching key spells. - You have a decent researchable research buff, which is a flat bonus to Labs/Observatories and so encourages a lot of cities - Cheesy combat spells aside, it feels like the Sorc/Druid are disadvantaged in the very late game as summoning can't keep up with multiple T4 producing cities, however by the same token summoning allows earlier aggression. I haven't had to deal with T4 spam mostly by virtue of being in a dominant position before they can really get to that stage. - You have the best tier 1 summon in the game - the Wisp, and a high chance of either starting with or being able to immediately research the spell. You can afford to spend early gold on rapid expansion, since your unit upkeep should mostly be mana based. There is one thing I think you want to be doing every turn as the Sorcerer until way into the midgame, and that's summoning a Wisp. Wisps are amazing scouts, and scouting is key, particularly early game. - The Map Generator seems to place undefended gold/mana/city pop/research/free building caches close to civ start locations - if you send early wisps off towards your nearest neighbours, with their high movement and floating, they can get there around turn 4 (Medium map) and often nab the caches intended for your neighbours, which is a huge advantage. - Early scouting reveals nearby Brigand camps (red-flagged Independents). Early elimination of these is key - see below. - Wisps can float along mountain ridges, which makes them really hard to hunt down - the AI usually doesn't bother. But with the high mobility, you can relocate many individual scouts into a concentrated swarm to punish poorly defended cities. At first, there will be one or two Wisps, hanging just out out of easy engagement and keeping tabs on army movement. Then, nearby scouts will begin to join, having hoovered up anything undefended in the surrounding area. Then more of them show up. It's Hitchcock's The Birds, but with mana faeries. - Wisps are both really really cheap AND devastatingly effective when massed in combat (anything in melee that is not immune to static shield will eventually proc the 2 round stun, at which point it's free flanking attacks against them). They can take lightly defended cities easily, since they can float over walls and teleport straight into melee distance with enemy shooters. They're so cheap, you can afford to take losses. From my starting position, I will usually split my starting stack to send units in all directions, revealing as much of the map as possible before I choose where to settle. For the first city, I'm looking to start with a +production site in domain. On turn 2, I'll collapse everything but t2 cavalry back into a main stack and start clearing sites in the city domain. I'll also rush-build a Builder's Hall (assuming I don't get one from a nearby free building cache) to get started on settlers asap. After one or two easy camps, I'll head straight for any Brigand camps to clear them - if you clear these guys out early, you can expand with zero garrison troops, relying on early warning from Wisp scouts to intercept incoming AI stacks. The guards of these Brigand camps are also really easy to farm with your leader/hero since they tend to consist of Scoundrels and maybe one or two melee units. Careful positioning of the hero allows you to shoot it out with only 1 enemy unit in effective range, the others taking shots from outside that. My aim in the early game is to give my leader/hero as many killing blows on units as possible, since they give the bulk of xp. With the Sorcerer's Shock Bolts, a cheap buff (Blessing/Stoneskin) you can easily essentially solo a Brigand camp while the rest of your army sits back, often gaining 2 or 3 levels in the process (I've managed level 5 by turn 3). There is an additional incentive to doing this, as heroes start with Fast Healing, so generally make good tanks. I tend to build my sorc as pure tank by dumping all levelups into Def/Res/HP - but don't skip Inflict Stun at level 7 - its ridiculous. After I have Summon Wisp, I look to build up Casting Points research to at least level 2 (45 CP) - this allows me to summon 1 Wisp per turn, with 5 CP left over (conveniently enough for the best cheap buff - Blessing from Creation Adept). 1 more level of CP research (55 CP) will allow me to cast Chain Lightning once without being present, which helps mobs of Wisps take down larger stacks. From this point I can then build up through the rest of the Summoning and Casting Points research chains towards Eldritch Horrors/Chaos Rift (although, until I can cast EHs, I continue summoning Wisps). Arcane Domination is also very useful - I don't generally summon the t3 serpents myself but I tend to end up with a few by dominating any neutral/enemy sorc ones I face). A particularly fun aspect to this strategy is that I've never really had to use my leader and their army in an aggressive role - they mostly just trundle around the map creeping and gaining veterancy whilst clearing out sites for new city placement and acting as a defensive trumpcard. My actual foreign policy is generally conducted by summon spam, so my Leader stack isn't wasting turns manoeuvring on the front lines. This is an integral part of the gameplan though, because all the gold from clearing out Crypts etc funds more settling and infrastructure. Having a highly vetted stack of Leader+friends allows high level sites to be cleared early without significant losses. Gold seems to be the most important resource in the game, so I will almost always sell treasure when given the option. As a Sorcerer, you don't need mounts since you can just summon one later on, and most free units (especially t1) are generally worse than Wisps. I'll only keep loot when it's an artifact with a useful effect that I couldn't forge. Specialisation-wise I've played around with a number of options, but I think for Human Sorcerer a good combo is Creation Adept/Destruction Adept/Expander. Creation Adept gives Blessing, a very cheap buff to Def/Res, a second option for a Healing spell (situationally useful), and the ability to make lands Temperate (good solution to blighted land). Destruction Adept most critically gives you Fast Plunder (so any city your Wisp mobs take but are unlikely to hold can be instantly Plundered) and a second option (City Enchant) for dealing with blight. Expander plays into the fast expansion, although most of the options are actually kinda narrow (the buff to Outposts is ok but will only apply for maybe 5-6 turns before the Outpost grows into a Village and loses the buff, which by the point in the game you can research it isn't so helpful). However, Fertility Rites is very good since city growth also buffs both Production and Gold Income. All of the elemental adept/masteries tend to give you effects that the Sorcerer gets natively and are also variable in effectiveness depending on the race/classes you're facing. Earth Mastery is attractive for Earthquake, but I don't think it's worth two Specialisation slots for one spell. Gerblyn - question for you. Is the AI initial reaction to meeting you based on the order in which you meet? Every single game I've played with 4 Emperor AIs, the first one I met declared war on his turn after meeting me, and the remaining two offered peace. trypsin fucked around with this message at 19:13 on Apr 17, 2014 |
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Apr 17, 2014 17:30
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Everything I read or see about this makes it sound absolutely excellent. Even so, I would love to see some more races/classes/etc. Are there plans for dlc/expansions? More than anything I want to play a necromancer class / undead race, but there are so many other cool options that could be represented. I know the game just came out and patches at the moment are focused on stability and balance, I am just curious if additional content is planned since the launch went so well.
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Apr 17, 2014 17:43
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For those curious, Triumph posted a timeline of events between Shadow Magic and AoW III http://ageofwonders.com/lore-galore-age-of-wonders-world-timeline/ I wonder what Meandor has been up to all this time.
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Apr 17, 2014 17:45
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Carnalfex posted:Everything I read or see about this makes it sound absolutely excellent. Even so, I would love to see some more races/classes/etc. Are there plans for dlc/expansions? More than anything I want to play a necromancer class / undead race, but there are so many other cool options that could be represented. I know the game just came out and patches at the moment are focused on stability and balance, I am just curious if additional content is planned since the launch went so well. Six classes doesn't sound like much, but they're so stuffed to the brim with awesome goodies they're very replayable. Races are mostly starting flavour but there are a lot of fun combinations with classes to mess around or strategize with. And yeah, they've mentioned wanting to do an expansion a few times, seems likely we'll see more stuff in the future. On that topic: the more I think about it, the more I'd like to see a Necromancer Class more than an actual undead race. Full on Undead factions have been done a ton and rarely make that much sense, but how awesome would it be to be a Necromancer in charge of goblins or dwarves with class undead units: Dwarven wraiths or Goblin skeletons anyone? Still, an undead Dreadnought sounds sweet too.
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Apr 17, 2014 18:15
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That timeline is strangely free of any mention of the undead from AoW1 or AoW2. Kind of hope the more classic skeletons/zombies aren't gone from AoW.
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Apr 17, 2014 18:23
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I would love to see non-Archon undead in an expansion.
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Apr 17, 2014 19:06
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There seems to be a general consensus that T4 spam is bad and that something needs to be done to limit their use and keep lower tier units relevant during late game. Having a T3 or T4 unit that can enhance the abilities of T1 and T2 units when leading the army seems like a good idea to me. The abusing of city building also seems to be a problem. The Civ 5 equivalent applied here would be some global morale penalty for each city you build beyond a certain point. This might represent sprawl and your inability to manage such a large empire while keeping everyone happy.
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Apr 17, 2014 19:11
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Considering outposts exist to claim resources there really should be more a limit on cities, as they aren't necessary to expand your territory/claim sites.
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Apr 17, 2014 19:34
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Eh, Tier 4 spamming isn't even a thing except on large maps or very late game if you've been playing passively. The devs have already said they'll be adding more building requirements for Tier 4 units and nerfing them slightly and also probably buffing Pikes a little. I reeeeally think people should just wait for the patch and see how balance shakes out before making added suggestions. Re: Leadership Bonuses. We already have Heroes who can bestow all kinds of crazy stackwide buffs, up to and including an added damage type for all units or auto-ressurecting every member of the stack as long as they win. We also have immensely powerful battlefield buff and debuff spells that can be applied lategame. The depth of tricks you can pull with even bottom-tier units is territory that's barely been explored at this point in the game.
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Apr 17, 2014 19:39
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Inverness posted:There seems to be a general consensus that T4 spam is bad and that something needs to be done to limit their use and keep lower tier units relevant during late game. T4 spam is bad, specifically, a sign one's early to mid game was terrible. The consensus is more that it's dominant, which is rather suspect. City founding definitely seems to have some issues, looking to Civ 5's happiness mechanic however seems like a bad idea, it was an ugly mechanic that was never really succesfull in limiting city-spam (space limitations and a science nerf were responsible for that). Slowing down the return of investment on city founding seems like a much better idea to me, it deals with the problem at its core without needing added-on penalties that can be circumvented (and will probably help slow down the coming of tier 4s a bit too). madmac posted:Eh, Tier 4 spamming isn't even a thing except on large maps or very late game if you've been playing passively. The devs have already said they'll be adding more building requirements for Tier 4 units and nerfing them slightly and also probably buffing Pikes a little. I reeeeally think people should just wait for the patch and see how balance shakes out before making added suggestions. Yeah, tier 4 spam being the talk of the town to me is really an indicator of how singleplayer focused this game is and how much space it gives a player to play however they want. Really the amount of power you can concentrate in a tier 2 package is incredible and even tier 1 is hardly a slouch. If this game was more MP oriented the T4 topic would be "they come too late to make an impact and aren't strong enough", while the major topic would almost certainly be "The Tier 2 Problem" and "How come all games are decided before turn 40?". Autsj fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Apr 17, 2014 |
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Apr 17, 2014 19:46
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Game is more fun imo with city founding turned off.
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Apr 17, 2014 19:50
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They could increase upkeep by a curve the more T4 you get. Eg: A single T4 unit might cost 30 gold per turn in upkeep. But two T4 would cost 66 in upkeep; 100, 160, 250, and so on. So the total number of t4 units you have would increase the base upkeep for each individual unit. The idea being that at a certain point the upkeep cost wouldn't match the payoff for the units so you'd want to keep it below like 10 t4 units.
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Apr 17, 2014 20:01
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Nuclearmonkee posted:Game is more fun imo with city founding turned off. I find this too, no city founding and few neutral cities help a lot, but I think it could be improved by having some specific mechanic to limit the effectiveness of large numbers of cities, not least because even with few cities, capturing one still gives you a massive boost to your power and still lets you steamroll smaller empires quite easily. Something to limit winning by resources would be nice, given the game's excellent and decisive combat engine. Winning a fight is a bit meaningless if your enemy can replace their losses easily.
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Apr 17, 2014 20:08
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OwlFancier posted:I find this too, no city founding and few neutral cities help a lot, but I think it could be improved by having some specific mechanic to limit the effectiveness of large numbers of cities, not least because even with few cities, capturing one still gives you a massive boost to your power and still lets you steamroll smaller empires quite easily. Some of the big mods for shadow magic simply made settlers increase in cost/build time for each city you controlled. It went a long way towards helping with this, and could potentially even be built into the options menu as a slider if people wanted different amounts of risk vs reward when looking to expand.
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Apr 17, 2014 20:36
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I'm not sure if I'd want limits on city foundation, as the more Royal Palaces you build, the more casting points you end up with.
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Apr 17, 2014 21:10
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Prof. B. Bearington posted:Gerblyn - question for you. Is the AI initial reaction to meeting you based on the order in which you meet? Every single game I've played with 4 Emperor AIs, the first one I met declared war on his turn after meeting me, and the remaining two offered peace. Erm, I don't really know. Diplomacy and its AI is one of the few parts of the system I'm pretty unfamiliar with. AFAIK the biggest influencing factor is how strong the AI think it is compared to you. If the AI thinks you're weak with regards to army size, it will be aggressive, if you're stronger, it will want peace. I believe there's also some randomization, and it compare AI alignment to yours as well, though I'm not sure about that. Carnalfex posted:Some of the big mods for shadow magic simply made settlers increase in cost/build time for each city you controlled. It went a long way towards helping with this, and could potentially even be built into the options menu as a slider if people wanted different amounts of risk vs reward when looking to expand. It's weird, I never really built cities when I played shadow magic, there never really seemed to be much point. Probably because you could cap gold/mana producers just by walking over them, rather than needing a city/fort to lock them down. We're experimenting with making settlers more expensive at the moment, they really are way too cheap for what you get. I'm hoping it will be enough, but I'm not sure. When people say the best way to have fun is to simply switch a whole system off, it's usually a sign that something drastic might need to be done to fix it.
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Apr 17, 2014 21:13
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Gerblyn posted:It's weird, I never really built cities when I played shadow magic, there never really seemed to be much point. Probably because you could cap gold/mana producers just by walking over them, rather than needing a city/fort to lock them down. We're experimenting with making settlers more expensive at the moment, they really are way too cheap for what you get. I'm hoping it will be enough, but I'm not sure. When people say the best way to have fun is to simply switch a whole system off, it's usually a sign that something drastic might need to be done to fix it.
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Apr 17, 2014 21:21
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Played a couple games with a friend over the last few nights. We immediately turned off city founding without even thinking about it, because we're old AoW1 players and it feels wrong. I'm enjoying the game for the most part, but I feel like I spend a lot of time researching poo poo I don't want, just to get more open slots to hopefully find things I actually want to research. Other than a few exceptions (class unit order, seafaring/advanced), there's no actual tech tree to the research process is there? My friend was pretty disappointed about having a really awesome spell from very near the beginning of the first game, and completing the entire second game without ever seeing it as an option to research. (He was the same character, so that wasn't the issue). It's still early going obviously, but I'm pretty sure I liked the magic and race system from AoW1 a lot more than the class system in this. LibbyM fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Apr 17, 2014 |
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Apr 17, 2014 23:12
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LibbyM posted:Played a couple games with a friend over the last few nights. We immediately turned off city founding without even thinking about it, because we're old AoW1 players and it feels wrong. That's correct, and yeah it can be a little bit annoying. Although the choices you get aren't entirely random, you get a certain number of choices for each catagory. So, if you're looking for say a combat spell, or a global enchantment, researching those will free up more slots of that type.
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Apr 17, 2014 23:20
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I feel like if the AI was better at being aggressive then we'd see less talk of T4 spam and ICS simply because players trying to do that would get murdered by risk-taking AI players. That's certainly what a human would do if he knew that someone was investing heavily into economy rather than military.
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Apr 17, 2014 23:20
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madmac posted:That's correct, and yeah it can be a little bit annoying. Although the choices you get aren't entirely random, you get a certain number of choices for each catagory. So, if you're looking for say a combat spell, or a global enchantment, researching those will free up more slots of that type. That's actually a pretty useful thing to know. Should have been obvious but we somehow missed that.
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Apr 17, 2014 23:22
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Splicer posted:As per Carnalfex, scaling the costs based on how many you already have seems like a good start. Going to echo this. I like settling new grounds for the Glorious Fatherland  But it's important to make the player work for it or weigh and balance it after a point. It should be part of the experience though to a point.
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Apr 17, 2014 23:29
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Gerblyn posted:It's weird, I never really built cities when I played shadow magic, there never really seemed to be much point. Probably because you could cap gold/mana producers just by walking over them, rather than needing a city/fort to lock them down. We're experimenting with making settlers more expensive at the moment, they really are way too cheap for what you get. I'm hoping it will be enough, but I'm not sure. When people say the best way to have fun is to simply switch a whole system off, it's usually a sign that something drastic might need to be done to fix it. City founding is fun, the game offers some nice choices in where to build your cities, the problem is that with city founding on, you can build huge numbers of cities and there is no reason not to. A pisshole in the middle of a frozen swamp on the rear end end of a peninsula nobody cares about will still output a chunk of cash, mana, and spellcasting points if you give it a little while. Essentially there should probably be something to make you think 'maybe I shouldn't build a city there' because there currently isn't. Perhaps if outposts cost money instead of providing it, and cities didn't grow unless they had a growth resource in their zone of control? Or couldn't grow past a small size or something. Something to make it undesirable to carpet every square foot of land in cities, and also something to prevent massive amounts of resources being fairly easy to get.
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Apr 17, 2014 23:29
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Arrrthritis posted:I cannot empathize with all of this t4 complaining having played through four missions of both campaigns and still haven't used/faced a single t4 unit. These people must really be sitting on their asses for this stuff to end up happening. I've not touched the campaign even once. It's so fast to get to T3 units that I don't see why I wouldn't be using exclusively them by mid way in.
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Apr 18, 2014 00:14
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