abysia strategies

[Caseus]

For me, single player IS the game.

In multiplayer you have to contend with cheaters. You have to contend with people exploiting loopholes in the game system to do things the designers never intended. The actual fun parts of the game -- the huge variety of spells, magic items, and units -- are lost in the intense competitiveness of multiplayer. "You can't do X, that doesn't work in multiplayer!"

I suspect it's far worse than that. I suspect that in multiplayer, your race is merely a chassis for getting out the Big Summons. The incredibly diversity of races and units is virtually meaningless compared to the power of Ice Devils, Air Queens, etc.

Having never played multiplayer, I could be wrong. But I doubt it.


Caseus

[Cohen]

You've hit the point Caseus, more or less.
Don't forget national mages, however, they can still do damage even with the big guys in, but ONLY for certain nations.

In fact I hope in Dom3 troops will be always useful, from the start to the Last.

[archaeolept]

Caseus said:
For me, single player IS the game.

In multiplayer you have to contend with cheaters. You have to contend with people exploiting loopholes in the game system to do things the designers never intended. The actual fun parts of the game -- the huge variety of spells, magic items, and units -- are lost in the intense competitiveness of multiplayer. "You can't do X, that doesn't work in multiplayer!"

I suspect it's far worse than that. I suspect that in multiplayer, your race is merely a chassis for getting out the Big Summons. The incredibly diversity of races and units is virtually meaningless compared to the power of Ice Devils, Air Queens, etc.

Having never played multiplayer, I could be wrong. But I doubt it.


Caseus

you really are in no position to say. Frankly, you are quite wrong, overall. It is in SP that there is no diversity, because all tactics are about equally successful against the lay down and die AI.

[alexti]

Caseus said:
For me, single player IS the game.

In multiplayer you have to contend with cheaters.

It doesn't seem there are cheaters left since Norfleet quitted.

Caseus said:
You have to contend with people exploiting loopholes in the game system to do things the designers never intended. The actual fun parts of the game -- the huge variety of spells, magic items, and units -- are lost in the intense competitiveness of multiplayer. "You can't do X, that doesn't work in multiplayer!"

No, X works, but only in right circumstances. The fun of MP is to figure out which X will work in the current situation. Concerning the loopholes, there aren't many, and they are not significant, at Last significant ones got patched. But of course in the game of such complexity, no known loopholes doesn't mean that they don't exist.

Caseus said:
I suspect it's far worse than that. I suspect that in multiplayer, your race is merely a chassis for getting out the Big Summons. The incredibly diversity of races and units is virtually meaningless compared to the power of Ice Devils, Air Queens, etc.

Ice Devils, Air Queens etc are not particularly strong in MP. In SP they look strong just because AI doesn't know how to deal with them. Against human players, those ID and AQs will be dying left and right. It's true there's a period in the early game when you can safely raid many nations with ID or AQ, but that period doesn't Last long. After that they become just super-commanders (as opposite to super-combatants) who need a strong army to achieve anything.

The nation still makes a difference until the very end. Mostly due to the mages, national troops still remain useful though. Something has to make numbers in your army. At that stage distinction between most of national troops become minimal, however some nations (R'lyeh, Caelum, C'tis) still have national troops that can play distinctive role on the battlefield.

[Zen]

I'd say any stealth army has usefulness until the end of the game. Though my concept of "End of the Game" might vary from others, but usually until a decisive win or the game becomes to micro to play.

[Edi]

I've always found Abysia relatively easu to play, and have found a couple of good pretenders for them that don't really act as SC but whoi nicely patch their weaknesses. And anybody who complains about not being able to get dwarven hammers with Abysia is just plain incompetent. Get earth warlock, forge bloodstone, equip, forge boots, equip, forge hammer, repeat hammer, start cranking out stuff. Having a pretender with E4 or above is also good, because half of your mages (and all of the artillery ones) are sacred, so they get help from the reinvigo blessing, especially if you can equipe them with reinvigo items. My first MP, Back to the Fray, I'm playing Abysia, and I'm not doing badly at all (relatively speaking), but I've also been lucky.

Edi

Edi

[Graeme Dice]

Caseus said:
In multiplayer you have to contend with cheaters.

There aren't many of those left with the current Version.

You have to contend with people exploiting loopholes in the game system to do things the designers never intended.

If the various gem-producing items and supercombatants were intended to be completely useless, then the game would have made them that way.

Having never played multiplayer, I could be wrong.

You are.

[Caseus]

Graeme Dice said:

You are.

What about the part where I said:

The actual fun parts of the game -- the huge variety of spells, magic items, and units -- are lost in the intense competitiveness of multiplayer. "You can't do X, that doesn't work in multiplayer!"

Am I wrong about that? Is Dominions 2 multiplayer free of rabidly aggressive, hypercompetitive players who destroy any semblance of fun in the game?

Do you have to use only certain key strategies or you might as well not play? Your own Posts seem to indicate this is the case.

So tell me about me being wrong, please?


Caseus

[Kel]

Caseus said:
Am I wrong about that? Is Dominions 2 multiplayer free of rabidly aggressive, hypercompetitive players who destroy any semblance of fun in the game?

I suspect everyone plays the way that is, for them, fun.

If you don't like playing with people who are competitive, that is certainly a valid preference but keep in mind, *you* are asking about strategies, or at least that's how I took it. Any answer you get will be based on what is an effective strategy, rather than what your idea of fun is.

Lastly, the ironic thing is that you absolutely can use any spell/item/nation/strategy in MP. You may be more likely to lose but if you aren't a "hypercompetitive player", it shouldn't bother you so much.

- Kel

[Cainehill]

Caseus said:
What about the part where I said:

The actual fun parts of the game -- the huge variety of spells, magic items, and units -- are lost in the intense competitiveness of multiplayer. "You can't do X, that doesn't work in multiplayer!"

Am I wrong about that? Is Dominions 2 multiplayer free of rabidly aggressive, hypercompetitive players who destroy any semblance of fun in the game?

You might try a couple MP games and see if that's your experience. Or, try reading through this game's thread. (Yes, it's a tremendously long thread, but skip around the pages a bit; page 15 and 16 for example. A lot of the first and Last pages were about setting up the game, and then talking about setting up another one.) Does that sound like a bunch of rabid hypercompetitive players?

Also, unlike games like Quake or Warcraft and the like, Dominions games go long enough, are slow paced enough, that even a couple of hypercompetitive types don't ruin the fun of the game. (Unlike some of the realtime ones, where you're shot/dead/crushed inside of a few minutes of frantic clicking.) I've had a lot of fun in games where I was doing quite poorly, in part because I was trying out wacky ideas and strategies that were based on my limitted options (troops, forgings, spells researched, mages, etc).

I've played a _lot_ of MP games. My only win thus far was an allied win, and with 3 players and a mutant setup (0 magic site settings, VD research, tiny map, and you couldn't add any magic to the pretender chassis) that didn't count for much. Now I think I have ... 3 games out of about 10 in which I may have a decent chance at a win. Even if I don't win, I get a huge kick out of some of the battles, even ones I lose (or "lose", defeated but with a net gain).

SP got tedious - the AI isn't much of a challenge, I didn't have to work very hard (ie, didn't have to learn and expand my tactics / strategies), and it doesn't mean anything - I could quit a game or restart as soon as it lost my attention. Going against human players, you see a much wider range of strategies and forces that you have to contend with, since the AI tends to do pretty much the same sorts of things.

Do you have to use only certain key strategies or you might as well not play? Your own Posts seem to indicate this is the case.

Nope, there aren't certain key strategies you have to use. There are certain strategies you have to learn to counter though - what to do about SCs, what to do about wrathers, how to try and deal with armies of almost invulnerable troops (such as those produced by Enliven Statues). And there are certain things you have to keep in mind - if you don't work on your research, or don't use the results of your research, you will lose. Even that can be modified, by playing on smaller maps, with research more difficult and, more importantly, fewer magic sites.

*shrug* If you're having enough fun with SP, great. But to many of us, the MP games are a lot more interesting and unpredictable, and therefor more entertaining and fun for us.