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November 10th, 2004, 02:12 AM
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General
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Join Date: Nov 2000
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Re: Conceptual Balance Series (Mod)
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The Panther said:
I fail to see how a competent Caelum player will lose any seraphs.
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Rain of stones for Arco and Vanheim. Raise skeletons for C'tis. Howl for Man and Pangaea. Machaka can use all three of these at once. Growing fury if you really are short on mages and need to keep your troops from routing. Acid rain for T'ien C'Hi and Atlantis. Vanadrott's and the like for Vanheim or Tuatha. Devils, devils and more devils for Abysia or Mictlan. Add in fireshielded lightning immune Archdevils and falling fires to clear away false horrows. Astral tempset for anyone with golems.
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Too much fear for anything but perhaps undead.
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Or vine ogres or mechanical men or living statues.
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Even enemy fliers can only kill a few of the archers who are close by.
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You didn't bring storms? Devils will kill your archers on the first turns, then quickly move on your seraphs and other troops. They won't rout either.
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In particular, Ulm had no chance. His smiths always targeted his own troops once the horrors appeared. His best strategy was scripting fire shield on his commanders where he could.
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Ulm versus the air nations is always uneven. This isn't a particularly good comparison point.
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Surprisingly enough, the seraphs frequently switched to frozen heart against the bane lords and Jontun infantry once the script ran out, which was very good.
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No, they certainly didn't switch to frozen heart, since bane lords and Jotuns are both immune to cold.
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Arco was a rookie in his second MP game, that much was true. He could have beat me with the astral mind spells which ignore the horrors. But he had too many priests and not enough astrologers.
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He brought priests to a battle with Caelum. That tells you that the Arco player didn't really have a good grasp of how to defeat Caelum. He'd have been better off throwing around the elemental battlefield magic that arco is good at.
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Certainly not 20 seraphs.
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How are you planning to defend them against a spell like rain of stones, which is especially devastating against physically weak mages? Or howl, that brings wolves up behind your troops?
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Also, the seraphs are so incredibly cheap for their power that Caelum will always have more fighting mages than any other race.
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They certainly won't research much faster or have more mages than C'Tis, nor Utgard, nor Machaka.
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I will agree that Caelum becomes somewhat limited late game, but I have not played past about turn 70 in any MP game as yet.
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Late game is about turn 20-40 onwards, depending on when people have developed magical paths other than what their nation easily provides.
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November 10th, 2004, 08:03 AM
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Major
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Join Date: May 2003
Location: Solomon Islands
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Re: Conceptual Balance Series (Mod)
Quote:
Graeme Dice said:
Rain of stones for Arco and Vanheim. Raise skeletons for C'tis. Howl for Man and Pangaea.
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Hmm, I was the Jotunheim player Panther referred to. Howl is a good idea. I wish I had thought of it.
I tried some things which I detailed in the Newbie Slugfest thread. Mostly, I've found that having mindless tanks doesn't work too well unless you have good mages able to kill the false horrors / mages. The mindless stuff (vine ogres, skeletons) can actually be killed by false horrors fairly reliably because of the horrors' very good combat stats and ethereality. Making chaff to tank horrors costs gems too while making false horrors doesn't cost any.  And I've had my mages get scared away by false horrors (even without any horrors attacking them), thus causing the mindless chaff to dissolve.
I also watched some of Ulm's battles. I expected "Blade Wind" to work against the horrors, but they missed most of the time.
How about some more concrete advice? Panther never did need to go there far, but it seems to me that if I ever did build a significant force of mindless stuff, mages, etc., Caelum could just pop in a seraph to cast Wrathful Skies and blow things up. And just how could one defend against an air queen set to cast Wrathful Skies before attacking? *Sigh*
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November 28th, 2004, 02:21 PM
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Lieutenant General
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Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Albuquerque New Mexico
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Re: Conceptual Balance Series (Mod)
Hmmm. Latest Version of all three mods, the zip file isn't containing a ReadMe anymore.
About the Scale Mod, I'm not sure what the default numbers are, so I'm thinking that Turmoil's income drop is reduced, while sloth / death / misfortune's ill effects have been increased? I'm guessing this is the case, as it makes the common Order/Sloth/Death/Misfortune combo less appealing.
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Wormwood and wine, and the bitter taste of ashes.
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November 10th, 2004, 02:13 AM
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First Lieutenant
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Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Calgary, Canada
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Re: Conceptual Balance Series (Mod)
Quote:
The Panther said:
Quote:
alexti said:
You're expected to lose all your seraphs and archers to a competent player in such a battle though...
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I fail to see how a competent Caelum player will lose any seraphs. 40 false horrors on the second move, then 80 on the third. Too much fear for anything but perhaps undead. Even enemy fliers can only kill a few of the archers who are close by.
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How many seraphs are going to live through turn 1? It's pretty hard to defend them. If you're attacking the army that siege your fort, the opponents move first, so you have no chance to defend seraphs at all. Pretty much any mass-destruction will decimate them. If you're defender you have better chances because you can cast some protection spells on your mages first. Though most of them are difficult for Caelum, so pretender needs to be constructed to keep this scenario in mind. Even with that there're few problems. Do you cast global protection or local area? Global protection is costly and harder to cast and enemy's attack may be a fake. If you cast on local area you need to put mages close together which will make them more vulnerable to opponent's local area damage spells. Even if you get it right, enemy may cast some global damage spells, which may not kill seraphs right away, but it may hurt them overtime while killing false horrors en-masse. And if the opponent brings some determined troops (undead, vine men/ogres etc), false horrors don't do any good. Lighting is not very good either vs cheap undead/vine men. Particularly nasty opponent will cast few swarms as well. And opponent has an option of lifting the siege and raining some nasties on your concentrated forces next turn.
So this idea of concentrating all seraphs together seems quite risky. Besides, to be a defender one have to sit with this force in the fortress (which makes it vulnerable to remote mass-destruction spells) and contradicts with raiding plans.
While being one of the top nations, Caelum is not straight-forward to play. They need to branch out their development to have some capable armies that don't rely on seraphs too much. Some kind of balance between defenses and raiding is needed.
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November 10th, 2004, 02:22 AM
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Lieutenant General
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Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Albuquerque New Mexico
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Re: Conceptual Balance Series (Mod)
Quote:
alexti said:
While being one of the top nations, Caelum is not straight-forward to play. They need to branch out their development to have some capable armies that don't rely on seraphs too much. Some kind of balance between defenses and raiding is needed.
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Exactly - same with Pythium and Arco, etc. The top tier nations (for anything but a tiny map blitz, where simple nations like Ulm or New Era Pangaea shine) tend to be complicated and require more thought and strategy.
A little bit of a boost for defense (PD, etc) might be nice to see, likewise a little bit of a nerf for raiders, so that they can't _always_ move before being counterattacked. (Vanheim was a huge PITA in one of my Caelum games; took 10-15 turns to deal with his raiders. Only another 5 or 10 to finish his nation after that though.  )
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Wormwood and wine, and the bitter taste of ashes.
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November 28th, 2004, 09:46 PM
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National Security Advisor
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Join Date: Dec 1999
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Re: Conceptual Balance Series (Mod)
Just curious - Is there still no public documentation for the magic item cost/requirements modding?
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