Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?

[Norfleet]

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!

[Scott Hebert]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
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.

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).

[Cheezeninja]

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 ]

[Blitz]

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 =(.

[Norfleet]

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.

[Blitz]

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.

[Blitz]

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.