Wild Hunt & Ghost Ship Armada too weak?

[quantum_mechani]

jutetrea said:
Agreed, although I think the changes wouldn't necessarily have to be to the spells but to their paths/costs.

By Conj 9 few care if they lose a priest here and there unless they've randomly Thug'd one. Also, by Conj 9 no one is going to waste a slot or extra gems to cast it when there are more appealing globals. Possibly drop down to Con 6, same cost?

Ghost ship isn't that bad really except the high gem cost. Its more of a way to annoy enemies than anything else. Possibly Ench 6 and 40 gems (think 30 is more reasonable for the benefit, but doubt it could go so low). Unless the spell was changed completely to either attack multiple sites per turn (a la Wild/Kindly) I wouldn't see it being that popular to begin with.

IMO there are the game winners
Utterdark
Bounty
Nexus
Burden(?)
Thetis (situational)

The very useful
forge
all the gem producers
GoH

So-So
Morgana
Wrath
Corruption
Riches
Haunted Forest


Fun, yet not really worth it unless situational
All the rest

Tweaking the gem cost and pathcost like what you suggest is almost exactly what the CB mod does for ghost armada, and sad to say I still have yet to see anyone cast it.

I would categorize the globals more like this:

Game winners:
Forge of the Ancients
Arcane Nexus

Very Useful:
Gift of Health
Most of the gem producers
Haunted Forest
Nature's Bounty

The niche:
Fata Morgana
Mechanical Militia
Lure of the Deep
Wrath of God
Maelstrom
Stellar Focus

The very niche:
Guardians of the Deep
Thetis Blessing
Astral Corruption
Illwinter
Perpetual Storm
Utterdark
Burden of Time
Strands of Acrane Power
Enchanted Forest
Eyes of God

The near useless:
Wild Hunt
Ghost Armada
The Kindly Ones
Riches from Beneath
Second Sun
Wrath of the Sea
Dark Skies
Foul Air
The Looming Hell

And that's being pretty charitable with 'very niche' given half of them I have never seen cast at all, and the other half I have only ever seen succeed in annoying the other players enough to gang the caster.

[Shovah32]

I pretty much agree with QM but i would move a few. I would say astral corruption is atleast niche. If you have the best blood economy its great so it would be niche rather than very niche for me(although i do play blood alot so my opinion may be biased).

[Turin]

Doesn´t ghost ship armada have a couple of unique dudes, like the captain? You could improve their stats to make them a bit more fearsome.

[Sandman]

Foul air is a really nasty spell when the AI casts it. Every unit in the world which gets wounded gets diseased. The main problem is that nations which would benefit from it struggle to find the air magic to cast it.

Maybe Lanka...?

[Hadrian_II]

I think every global has some use, but the problem is more that there are only 5 slots. If every global would get his own slot someone might even care to caste Riches from Beneath.

I dont understand anyway why the globals are limited to 5.

[quantum_mechani]

Hadrian_II said:
I think every global has some use, but the problem is more that there are only 5 slots. If every global would get his own slot someone might even care to caste Riches from Beneath.

I dont understand anyway why the globals are limited to 5.

That may be a piece of the problem, but it's far from the whole thing. Even with infinite slots I can't imagine casting wrath of the sea or many of the other globals low on the list.

[SelfishGene]

I'm suprised you rated Astral Corruption so low.

What good does a million astral pearls do if you can't cast anything with them without dying?

Unless i'm misunderstood how AC works, don't you have to beat the horror in order for the spell to "go through" and be considered to have happened. IE, you can't cast dispel successfully unless you beat the horror that follows.

[Micah]

No, the spell is cast first, then the attack happens. Low-level horror attacks also don't pose much of a threat to a prepared mage. Astral mages can cast returning, naure mages can spam a couple of swarms, death mages can skel-spam and follow up with drain life, fire, water, and air all have direct attack spells that will kill a horror as long as it gets stuck on bodyguards for a few rounds. Blood has leech and life for a life. Earth lacks anything stellar to deal with them, but that's a pretty small segment of the mage population.

Every so often you'll get unlucky, or something really big and nasty will show up, but there are plenty of ways around it.

[Jazzepi]

Hadrian_II said:
I think every global has some use, but the problem is more that there are only 5 slots. If every global would get his own slot someone might even care to caste Riches from Beneath.

I dont understand anyway why the globals are limited to 5.

I think it would be a mistake to remove the cap. Perhaps it could be adjusted to scale with the number of players, or simply be an option that you can set during server setup.

In any case, having a limit creates game tension. Tension is what makes decisions hard. When decisions are hard, you have to be good to make the correct ones. This is what separates bad players from good players and makes intricate, complex games like Dominions 3, with lots of tension, good.

If you remove the limit, then you remove some of the tension about casting globals, and therefore some of the interesting decisions you have to make.

You don't have to worry about filling up slots anymore, and you can't randomly get your global dispelled by someone else's. You also don't have to worry about having to put enough gems into your global enchantment that'll dispel someone else's when all 5 slots are filled. By taking out these things, and having no cap Dominions 3 would be a more shallow game.

Jazzepi

[Ubercat]

Jazzepi said:

I think it would be a mistake to remove the cap. Perhaps it could be adjusted to scale with the number of players, or simply be an option that you can set during server setup.

In any case, having a limit creates game tension. Tension is what makes decisions hard. When decisions are hard, you have to be good to make the correct ones. This is what separates bad players from good players and makes intricate, complex games like Dominions 3, with lots of tension, good.

If you remove the limit, then you remove some of the tension about casting globals, and therefore some of the interesting decisions you have to make.

You don't have to worry about filling up slots anymore, and you can't randomly get your global dispelled by someone else's. You also don't have to worry about having to put enough gems into your global enchantment that'll dispel someone else's when all 5 slots are filled. By taking out these things, and having no cap Dominions 3 would be a more shallow game.

Jazzepi

Then you're stuck with the problem of there being a ton of globals which no experienced player will waste their time casting, expecially in MP. Why not up the global cap to eight? or 1/2 the number of players, minimum 5?