Arena? What is the Arena?
 

What is the Arena? How do I find it? It is referenced in this post:
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...o=&fpart=1

Re: Arena? What is the Arena?
 

Are is a magic site but The Arena is a commander vs commander deathmatch competition that occasionaly comes up in the game

Re: Arena? What is the Arena?
 

The Arena is a site that gives you gold.

And the Arena Death Match is a fight to the death between two commanders, wherein the victor gets a magic artefact.

Re: Arena? What is the Arena?
 

Let me be more specific on the death match. Most civilizations will send a hero, and then the arena match does a series of 1-on-1 battles, with the victor winning an artifact. You keep the artifact until the next arena, when you can either send another person and try to keep the artifact, or forefit it to the winning nation.

Usually its good to try to win the arena, if you have a powerful well equipped commander (and prophets make a good choice too), simply to kill the enemy commanders and make sure nobody else gets the weapon. Occasionally some empires will risk their god, and gods usually win, but theres always that chance that some Jountheim frost giant will show up with a midget masher and decimate your god.

Re: Arena? What is the Arena?
 

Actually if you win and have a hand slot (Two? The Trident is two-handed, right?), you get the prize.
It is cursed so the Champion has to keep it and when another death match happens, the Champion will automatically attend.
(Unless that's changed since Dom2. I don't think it has.)

The Champion is assumed to be the current holder of the trident, so I'd assume it's possible he could be killed and someone else pick it up on the battlefield.

In Dom2, the AI would often send their god in. I haven't seen that yet in Dom3.

Re: Arena? What is the Arena?
 

They still do.

Re: Arena? What is the Arena?
 

I really, really dislike the Trident; it's a nifty weapon, and I like the idea that the Death Match champion goes to defend his title, but I'm not fond of losing both hand slots for the great honor of being automatically dragged back there.

Re: Arena? What is the Arena?
 

I think this is the one thing in Dom3 that is below par, if you send in a well equipped hero and he happens to win then you are forced to participate in the next competition and may lose him to a high level apell. Unless you keep upping his equipment dramatically you will eventually lose him. It is just not worth doing the prize does not make up for the fact that you will eventually lose that hero and all his goodies.

GM12

Re: Arena? What is the Arena?
 

95% of the time it's best not to send anyone into the death match arena when the game consists of 3 or more opponents. First looking at the odds reveals that only one individual will win and all others will be dying and thus not worth the life of a good commander. Second the prize involves an artifact which will curse your commander to continously return to this event for all future matches. Third in games with human opponents many players will send 'screwers' into the death match which have a main purpose of giving cursed items, horror marks, cursed, blind and so on... thus even if you win, the commander will be screwed.

Ideally the death match should have a prize which would encourage players to send a good commander. The most enticing prize off the top of my head would be random gems equal to the current game turn multiplied by 1.5. Thus game turn_10 would provide 15 random gems and game turn_50 would provide 75 random gems.

The death match could really be a very interesting event if the prize was improved.

Re: Arena? What is the Arena?
 

You also get +150 experience. Free heroic ability early in the game.

Re: Arena? What is the Arena?
 

One idea I had was to improve the prize if the current Champion successfully defended it.

Re: Arena? What is the Arena?
 

As I wrote earlier... even if your commander is lucky enough to win he will most likely be cursed, horror marks, cursed items, blind or something else when playing against human players... thus not that useful! If you're talking super early in the game then it's still usually not worth sending someone if there's lots of human players. Lets not forget the prize will curse the winner to return to all future death matches as well.
And if you're playing a SP game then unless you have less than 4 computer opponents your chances of winning are very slim and thus NOT worth the life of a good commander.

Current prize value is only worth sending someone if it's a small number of opponents.

Re: Arena? What is the Arena?
 

Do not send a destroyer of worlds or any other multiple attack champion to the arena because if u win u lose all other weapon slots to just the trident.

However a shapshifter is a good choice, for example my dragon won it but when I changed shape the trident had gone. Interestingly another arena event was called a turn or 2 later...

So far in SP I have won 4/4 death matches, sent 2 pretenders, 1 prophet and a powerful mage. In SP with a bit of thought, I think u have a very, very good chance of beating any of the AI champions.

In MP I have no experience but I suspect its a very, very bad idea to send a powerful unit to the arena. The prize is simply not worth it, especially as u will probably lose or end up horror/cursed/diseased etc...

Re: Arena? What is the Arena?
 

Oh, in SP... the AI doesn't really set up its commanders for duels. There's a much lower need to cover as many resistances as possible or to handle the fatigue of long battles, for instance, and summons or auto-attacking items have vastly more effect proportionally speaking. And targeting is much more obvious...

Early on, if you have a spare skelespammer (ex Dusk Elder), his odds are quite good against AIs. The prize is less valuable for them now that the quickness doesn't accelerate casting, but *shrug*. Ditto for a talisman o' skeleton-spamming.

A mage capable of casting Gifts from Heaven with heroic precision would be highly entertaining. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Arena? What is the Arena?
 

The most enticing prize off the top of my head would be the removal of curses, horror marks, cursed items and/or whatnot. That's a prize worth risking death for, and also eliminates the poison pill schemes.