Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

I'd like to get a sampling of the general community and their feelings about GE Arcoscephale. I'd like to think that I'm not the only one who loves the concept of this theme, but feels they are comparatively weak when compared to other races... in particular to Base Arcoscephale, which is generally considered one of the stronger nations. I've tried not to include any bias in the questions, but I think most people know where I stand =).

[ June 20, 2004, 23:37: Message edited by: Blitz ]

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

it is weak, though not the weakest.

i can't really see it as being a priority, however.

hopefully sometime they will be given a bit more oomph. perhaps make the troops affordable?

I'd say the automatic success of fatigue attacks should be more of a priority, since, as presently constituted, they seem like the new "pre-2.11 paralysis".

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

The wind riders need a price tweak, other than that, it's fine.

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

lol what about the resource cost of their fairly uninspiring hvy infantry, the myrmidons? 35 resources for an enforced sloth theme...

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

GE is fine. You want to see some seriously underwhelming themes, take a look at BK Tien Chi, NE Pan, or Raptor Caelum. GE Arco is far from bottom of the heap. Hell, Tien Chi, period, seems kinda underwhelming. When was the Last time you saw them in a game, and how well did they do? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

I have to concur with Norfleet in his assessment that there are far more critical areas than GE Arco to work on. Raptor Caelum in _particular_ suffers horribly in respect to the main theme. (I
've never tried to play BK Tien Chi.)

In regard to Tien Chi, I have made the observation that it does seem to be a nation that the AI is able to play well. If this is the case (and not simply my own poor play skill vis-a-vis TC), it might do well to study Tien Chi to try to figure out why the computer does relatively well playing it.

For the sake of completeness for the survey, though, I noted that question #2 seems to have no real positive answer. You ask, 'Should GE be a priority?", and the _most_ positive answer is 'if the designers have time'. I think that a simple 'yes' answer should be added to the poll.

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

All it takes is one spell to make TC totally ineffective in their area of speciality. Magic Duel. Take that and you can take out high gold mages by the dozen with a 50% of success with sages/vaetti and any other number of 1 astral mages. Witch Hunters, Pythium, Rlyeh and any other number of nations can neutralize them fairly easily.

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Since this is not a problem endemic to TC, but rather to Magic Duel, that suggests an imbalance issue with the Duel, not TC. That is to say, TC may be unbalanced, but it is Magic Duel that unbalances it. Therefore, any change should be made to Magic Duel, since this is not the only place where Magic Duel is warping the game (Pretender selection comes to mind).

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

My problem with TC is that the Celestial master, while versitile, lacks focus. I don't play TC much, but as I recall they only get level 2 water, is that right? I guess they scream for power of the spheres, but for my money I'll take a more focused mage any day. That's just personal taste though, and not really a weakness of the theme... just a big reason why I don't play it.

Master of the way on the other hand, is awesome. Too bad celestial masters weren't more like Theurgs or other more focused power mages.

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

Celestial Masters are one of the best mages in the game bar none.

Right near High Seraphs in my book for effectiveness. It's not uncommon in games with me to have 9 out of 10 of the slots filled with CM's laying down the unbridled punishment.

Unfortunately, their weakness can't be averted (I.E. 1 Astral). And when playing against people of any sort of skill, sending out throw away troops to Duel your masters is a common practice. And so either you are forced to take an Astral King/Queen which is dangerous in and of itself, or know that you can't use your mages.

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well, Magic Duel is the maker or breaker of Astral magic on a unit, and it DOES have a profoundly strong warping influence on the amount of Astral that is good....but whether this is an unbalanced thing or not, I dunno. Magic Duel is, however, a fairly potent attack against any astral mage that isn't ludicrously strong: It's totally accurate, and guaranteed to find the most powerful Astral mage on the battlefield and kill him if he isn't greater than +6 over the opposing duellists. Is Astral so powerful it needs such a hamhanded counterbalance? Hard to say.

[ June 21, 2004, 04:20: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yep, matter of taste though. I prefer astral magic and astrologers. They are damn cheap at 180 gold, and quickly get up to astral 5 with a cap each and a banner for the team. Yeah they are capitol-only, but it's not like they lack mobility. IMHO astrologer is right up there with Arch Seraph, and 60 points cheaper than the CM.

As if Vanheim needed any more toys, the Midgaard Volva are an even better deal at SS for 120. Nothing like a team of 30 of them mind deuling, soul slaying, paralysing, and stealing troops from the other side. Maybe not the bang for the buck of the battlefield that the fortune teller or seithkona are, but they've always been my personal favorite.

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yep, matter of taste though. I prefer astral magic and astrologers. They are damn cheap at 180 gold, and quickly get up to astral 5 with a cap each and a banner for the team. Yeah they are capitol-only, but it's not like they lack mobility. IMHO astrologer is right up there with Arch Seraph, and 60 points cheaper than the CM. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">CM's have spells that cannot be resisted, with Eagle Eyes can hammer into SC's that are trying to tear though them.

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

I'd say that boosting Arco GA would be about *the* lowest thing on my priority list, which is not to say there is no need for tweakings, but simply because there are soooo many more global issues I would rather see addressed first (bugfixes, interface fixes, AI tweakage).

And although I am not a competetive player, I definately agree with the assessment that CMs are the best mages around, bar none -- especially if we are talking about S&A. BK I don't play, so I can't say, but even in default they rock; together with imperial archers etc., they make insane support mages as well, basically being able to cast anything you really ever want with the right random and even minimal gear and power of the spheres / summon phoenix power/etc.

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

I'd say that there's nothing really *WRONG* with GE Arco, and that there are far more busted themes out there: RotR Caelum, BK TC, NE Pan, are themes that are very much unpopular and underwhelming. Let's do something about that first!

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">My concern is that there is nothing in the guidelines that takes Magic Duel into consideration. According to the modding guidelines, all magic is created equal. A SSSA mage should have the same value as the AAAS mage, but because of Magic Duel, they just don't.

Some ways that the game could be changed to address this issue:

1) Remove Magic Duel. Simple, effective, but probably too 'not well-thought-out enough'.

2) Add a similar spell for each path. The flip of the above, this adds the same 'low-path' issue to all of the other paths.

3) Change the way the Magic Duel works. Perhaps make it less random. There are very few ways that this would actually work, though.

4) Change the outcome of the Magic Duel. Instead of killing the loser, you could, say, remove the caster from the battle and put them in the owning player's capital, a la Returning. This accomplishes the battle effect of Magic Duel (removing the mage from battle), without the penalty that makes it truly game-warping (death of the losing mage). This option mitigates the current issue but doesn't remove it (and this could be a good or a bad thing, depending on your viewpoint).

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

I personally dont see anything really wrong with magic duel. It just adds another layer of paper rock sissors to the mix, with nations that get cheap low astral mages coming out ahead. If magic duel totally nerfed astral magic and made it weak then i would agree, but IMO it is still one of the strongest path's around. Having masses of astral 3-4 mages is so powerful that im glad there is a counter to it. Im far from an expert, but thats my opinion.

[ June 21, 2004, 18:28: Message edited by: Cheezeninja ]

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

I guess this may be a good time to point out how losing the 3 (and often 4-5 after gear/luck) power astrologers really sucks for GE.

Mystics are power 2, deul bait =(.

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

Mystics can commune and reach particularly mean astral levels, then mow down their opponents in a blaze of suicidal glory. Arco is not considered to be an astrally weak nation.

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

I was under the impression that communion did not boost defense against magic deul? If you have information to the contrary, I'd love to hear it.

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

On another note... I'm pleased that most players agree that GE could use some tweaks. I believe there's been substantial changes to at least one theme in every patch thus far. That makes sense, as I imagine designing new units is a lot more fun than fixing crash bugs. I must agree with some of the Posts that indicate that themes like Barbarian Kings and Return of the Raptors are on the whole weaker than Golden Era... but Golden Era really appeals to me, and I'd love to see it get more use.

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Unless I'm mistaken, there's a mod out there that changed the way Magic Duel worked, which seemed to be pretty well thought out.

It added a healthy fatigue cost for the spell, and the addition of an Astral gem for casting it, making it much less likely that someone would have mages spam-casting it as standard strategy.

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Communion has always boosted astral magic in Dom2, which is the relevant statistic for magic duel. The information that it did not help against magic duel most likely comes from a bug in the earliest Versions of Dom1, where the person who cast magic duel always won.

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Golden Era is fine! You're just not USING it right. Return of the Raptors, Barbarian Kings, and New Era are STILL the crummier of the themes by far. If you don't believe me, I'll be happy to pummel you with it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ June 22, 2004, 00:35: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

Most people disagree with you on that one it would seem Norfleet. And while I wouldn't mind playing a game against you sometime, I'm not sure your winning or losing would prove much when it comes to Golden Era's strength in the grand scheme of things.

You wouldn't concede that it is weaker than standard Arco?

[ June 22, 2004, 00:42: Message edited by: Blitz ]

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

Different, yes. Weaker...not really. You give up the Astrologer, and his full random pick, but you do gain the Philosophers, which are excellent researchers, and the very nice Engineers, a great boon to my castle stalling tactics...alas, they tend to be capitol only and move slowly, but I can forge flying shoes to get them to the front. The only annoyance is the difficulty in making them stop showing up when I press "n", but I get around this by assigning them to untrained blood hunt duty to keep them out of my way.

Yeah, the troops are nigh-unaffordable, and often capitol only as well. So what? It's not a troop theme, obviously.

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

It's neither troop based, nor mage based (losing astrologer). That's basicly they key right there isn;t it?

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I feel that the Philosophers, Engineers, and Sceptic makes up for the minor loss of the Astrologer's one random. You can cover most of your bases there just by taking ze death or ze blood on your pretender, both of which are easy to then jumpstart as a result. Combined with the superior research efficiencies of the Philosopher, who is cheap enough that you can easily churn them out one a turn from turn 1, GE is very much a magocracy.

Besides, with sloth, you can't really afford to buy enough of your troops to do more than serve as bodyguards, anyway.

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

I don't think GE Arco is weak, but like Mictlan, it might not be intuitive to everyone how to most effectively use it. The sloth slows down heavy troop production, but since they rarely die when used well, and afflicted ones can all be healed, they can accumulate into a numerous enough army, even if they aren't the emphasis. The Wind Riders, Wind Lords, and Myrmidon Champions can all be given extra equipment and so made into nice recruitable thugs, too.

PvK

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Been hearing this a lot. Perhaps people might care to enlighten us on their troopless, astrologer-free arcocephale strategies. Sure the Skeptic isn't awful, and the engineer can do some interesting things, but where's the beef folks?

Regular arco isn't that much weaker in a summoning strategy, albiet losing the earth/air gem income and better researcher. It's not like arco has horrible researchers in base, and you don't need THAT many air gems to summon an air queen.

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

With better research, GE Arco will summon the Air Queen (or whatever) sooner. It's not just what you do, but when you do it.

GE is not "troopless" - it's just not the only good ability. I made good use of 5-6 Myrmidons with 6 extra cardaces and the starting force (and [cough] Shedu - but use Nataj or whatever you prefer), in conquering level 5 independents, for example. Only one died, and by the time the others had some afflictions, I had two priestesses and several times as many replacement myrmidons and fliers ready. I had much better luck with these than I did with regular Arco's Hoplites and Hypaspists, but then, I come from an Ulm/Mictlan/Machaka background, I guess, so my battlefield setup may be different from others'.

I would also tend to make some demi-SC's out of the wind lords by adding some items to them. Add a few Icarians for flying semi-fodder to give them the critical mass to overwhelm targets, and time to arrive at the same time as the infantry. Peltasts get Fire Closest orders, so they stay behind the Cardaces and Myrmidons, throwing javelins and usually not getting into enemy axe range.

Meanwhile Mystics accumulate elemental skills, and forge some Astral boost items (skullcap, banner ...) and research astral/magic boost spells, and/or use Astral pretender so that an Astral thug accompanies mage armies once enemies might use cheap astral duellers - then duels hit the strongest target, and either lose, or are taking a big gamble. Astral and various elemental magics do their things.

Use Pretender or site mages to provide other magic paths if desired.

Etc.

PvK

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well if independants were relevant, this might matter. It's pretty much expected that your army + pretender should be able to expand at 1 province per turn, regardless of theme. Certianly this can't compare to something like Utgard Jotunheim, where the starting 8 units can clear one province, and the pretender another... with no casualties at all. Comparing these two themes is almost comical. The giants get 2 free temperature picks, a better mage than the mystic (6 picks overall, common 3-astral and 3-death Versions). They have excellent blood and death summoning capability, as well as one of the best bang for your buck mages in the game (seithkona). Their army is superior in almost every way... it lacks fliers, but demons more than make up that edge. The only areas you can give the edge to arco are in healing and research... but the seithkona certianly isn't any slouch in the research area. While Jotunheim may not have the selection of pretender choices that arco does, they can use the GK and POD... which hardly leaves them lacking in this area.

Where standard arco can boast edges in more efficient infantry and trampling, giants versus chariots and myrmidons is laughable to say the least. GE has no edge in magic over the giants, certianly no advantage in summons, and forging is a wash at best. Somehow I don't see philosophers and engineers making the difference in a matchup like this.

[ June 23, 2004, 00:33: Message edited by: Blitz ]

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

My typical antidote to giants is superior numbers of cannon fodder and missile troops, perhaps combined with spells but no valuable well-armored troops. Both Arcos have Cardaces, which are good cheap light/medium infantry with a very low resource cost - I would expect them (supported by indy archers, for example) to do very well against Jotun giants in a war of attrition. I would leave the myrmidons at home but might use some Icarids to try to take out the Jotun mages.

That is, I think GE also has more efficient infantry, if the player doesn't waste myrmidons or Wind Riders against things that make their armor irrelevant, like giants. Use the Cardaces and/or Peltasts or other light infantry and archers (and/or mages) against giants.

Note that Arco not only has 50-gold/5-research philosophers, but their labs only cost 100 gold. When they are building Myrmidons, they tend to have gold to spare, so it's well worth it to build several labs and have them all cranking out cheap researchers.

PvK

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It is highly debatable whether the Norna is superior to the mystic, since that requires you to make a judgement on whether a mage that is limited entirely to sorcery is better than one that has access to both elemental magic and astral magic. This is especially true when you consider that Jotunheim will never have a dozen or so mages that can cast astral fires.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Why are you sending chariots, which gain their advantage by trampling smaller troops, against giants? Myrmidons can hold their own against giants, since you can easily have three times their number with enough cheap castles producing them. If you can't produce enough Myrmidnos, then use your cheaper troops, since Jotuns are strong enough to kill just about any human in one hit.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Forging is certainly _not_ a wash. GE Arco has access to almost every elemental item, and most of the astral items as well.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Philosophers give you a huge lead in your research ability, since they are both extremely cheap, and extremely efficient researchers.

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Aren't philosophers capital only?

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

[quote]Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Originally posted by Blitz:
[qb] ...

Quote:

Where standard arco can boast edges in more efficient infantry and trampling, giants versus chariots and myrmidons is laughable to say the least.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Why are you sending chariots, which gain their advantage by trampling smaller troops, against giants? Myrmidons can hold their own against giants, since you can easily have three times their number with enough cheap castles producing them. If you can't produce enough Myrmidnos, then use your cheaper troops, since Jotuns are strong enough to kill just about any human in one hit.
... </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I wouldn't use Myrmidons, since the Myrm armor will do little good against giant-wielded weapons and hurled boulders. Practically the same effect can be had with Cardaces, who are 2/3 the cost and very low resources, so they are essentially disposable. The main thing is to have a lot of little worthless guys for them to busy themselves trying to squash with overkill weapons, while they get peppered with a combo of spears, javelins, arrows, and magic. Sending valuable (in gold or resources or gems) units against giants is more risky than is usually necessary.

And yes, the Philosopher and Skeptic are captiol-only. My mistake.

PvK

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I don't know which is more amusing, myrmidons "easily" holding their own against giants, or being able to mass produce them with any effectiveness. Obviously cheriots are bad against giants, that was the point.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">On the surface, it might seem that arco has the edge, but when you consider that most players use elemental magic on their pretender (air/water/earth), and not as much sorcery, you will find that it's much easier to fill the forging gaps as Jotunheim. GE gets paths FAWES, while jotun get WSDNB. Their strengths are different, but there's no clear edge to Arco.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I hear this a lot. That advantage completely vanishes if jotunheim finds sages. It's an advantage to be sure, but it's a capitol only troop that dosen't do anything BETTER than the seithkona... it does it cheaper. GE can only recruit one per turn. Since jotunheim can generally expand faster than GE, often this advantage in COST seems more important than it really is. By expanding quicker, jotunheim has a moderately good chance of finding sages, and even without finding them, they can often make up the gold difference between a seithkona and a philosopher.

I guess the best question to ask would be this... would you rather recruit philosophers or seithkona? One does one thing better than any other unit... and slightly better than a sage. The other was the winner of my "Best mage under 100 gold" poll. Comparing the two seems silly.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'm surprised you want to debate this, but maybe I shouldn't be. The norna is a better astral mage, and has access to level 3 death as well. She costs 220 to 180, but has an extra magic path. I'm a huge fan of the mystic, but if given the choice I'd prefer the norna. I imagine that's a matter of taste, but I think you might concede there's certianly no huge advantage to arco in magery... especially when you consider the Jotun Skratti, Norna, and Seithkona are available to jotun, compared to GE's single mage.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">GE will never have a dozen mages able to cast relief, drain life, or raise skeletons. I'd rather have a norna, but it's not a massive edge either way.

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Once you have 10 or so castles, then you certainly can produce myrmidons in fairly large numbers. They only need to hold for long enough for your mystics to kill the giants after all. Myrmidons are no worse at fighting giants than any of the other medium/heavy infantry that's available.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Your pretender can only do one thing at a time, and you will almost always need fewer death items than the elemental and astral ones.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">If given the choice between the two, then I would recruit philosophers until I had a need for Seithkona.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Druids and jade sorceresses are quite common, which can easily provide all you'll need for relief. Raise skeletons is a nice spell, but then normal arco doesn't get that either. Drain life s another spell that's good, but not necessary when you have mages that can cast all four types of elemental spells. It's quite difficult to get immunity to all of the elements without also leaving yourself open to soulslay.

[ June 23, 2004, 05:22: Message edited by: Graeme Dice ]

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Maybe not dozens of reliefers, but certainly Drain and Skeletons is simple enough: Mound Fiends with staffs. It doesn't help that death magic can expand exponentially as long as you fuel it properly, and all forms of Arco can Acash for all gem types easily enough, so you won't be lacking for death gems. One Mound Fiend can summon other Mound Fiends, and it just goes on.

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

On a more general note, I personally think that not every theme should be equally balanced. Sometimes people want a more challenging game, or particularly good players might want to level the playing-field somewhat when playing with friends.

Sure, you can always leave some points unused when you design your pretender, but the challenge you get from that is different than the challenge you get from an underpowered theme.

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

Another point about the Golden Era research advantage... since the philosophers are capitol-only, and the seithkona is a superior researcher to the mystic, once a second fort (or sage site) is producing researchers, the arcoscephale research bonus is for the most part eliminated.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'd have to disagree. Idealy the game should have perfect balance. It's never going to happen, in any game... but there are few advantages to having dominant themes and pretenders, as imbalances hurt diversity.

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I don't see why. A game with 17 default themes that are perfectly (or close enough to perfect for government work) balanced and then has 17 less well balanced themes, is still more diverse than a game that only has 17 default themes that are perfectly balanced - as long as none of the unbalanced themes are better than the default ones.

Not all play is knife-edge competitive play, so I don't see why all themes must be a real option for that kind of play. So what if you can't expect to win with a certain theme in an intense multi-player game? Winning isn't all there is to having fun, after all.

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">i kinda like that actually heh

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I don't see why. A game with 17 default themes that are perfectly (or close enough to perfect for government work) balanced and then has 17 less well balanced themes, is still more diverse than a game that only has 17 default themes that are perfectly balanced - as long as none of the unbalanced themes are better than the default ones.

Not all play is knife-edge competitive play, so I don't see why all themes must be a real option for that kind of play. So what if you can't expect to win with a certain theme in an intense multi-player game? Winning isn't all there is to having fun, after all. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Certainly. One of the reasons I like gaming and am bored by sports is that there are more lifelike situations involved. The real world isn't fair, and real situations are almost never "two opposed forces have perfectly fair starting conditions, and are competing for the same goal" (except in sports - yawn), but real situations still have plenty of ways to turn them around, and real situations tend to be more interesting and compelling (to me) than artificially "balanced" ones.

Similarly, one of the many reasons I like Dominions II is that it offers so many different possible approaches to play (even to play that is constrained by playing strictly competetively). Discussions of balance are thankfully made fairly irrelevant because each nation and play style and magic path and map etc. is so different that it's more about finding good approaches for new situations, than trying to break it down into a generic contest of "what is best".

PvK

[ June 23, 2004, 19:28: Message edited by: PvK ]

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hah. Tell that to my blue jays when they are playing the $200M yankees.

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Forging a dozen Crystal Matrices and giving them to priestesses makes this ridiculously easy for GE.

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

I didn't say all sports matches were fair...

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Today's underpowered option can be tomorrow's overpowered nerf-bait. I'm inclined to be leery of anyone proposing any kind of change as a result.

Especially since GE is fine!

Re: Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?
 

It's too bad we never got any developer feedback on golden era.