Best Unit in the Game... Any thoughts?

[Meglobob]

quantum_mechani said:

This seems a very odd way of looking at it, I can't think of a single spell that has ever been nerfed that is not still a useful part of any magic aresenal. The role of troops has been increased since dominions2, but ignoring magic is hardly a remotly viable strategy in 99% of games.

Other than Divine Bless, Smite, site searching spells, a little constuction for magic items and mages to do research the majority of nations already effectively ignore magic for the first 20 - 30 turns of the game.

Virtually all magic has very little influence on battles, with the sole exception of divine bless/bless for the first 20 - 30 turns. The average length of a MP game of Dom3 is 60 - 90 turns before a winner is declared, so for a 1/3 of the game magic has little or no influence on the game.

In Dom3 what do most players complain about? What threads attract the most debate? The answer is unfair blesses on certain nations sacreds, how unfair a elephant/mammoth rush is on nations like Ulm. With magic being so weak in the early part of the game, a strong bless nation or elephant/mammoth rush can only be stopped by a strong bless of your own, a awake pretender or stong/lucky diplomacy.

Magic needs boosting, especially battlefield magic and especially low level battlefield magic. Increasing AOE or number of effects or precision on certain spells would help game balance alot, especially early game balance.

From Dom2 to Dom3 quickness got nerfed, so the number of spells you could cast on a battlefield effectively got halfed. A big nerf to magic. At the same time army sizes increased from Dom2 to Dom3, so a spell with 1 effect killed 1 unit out of 50 strong army in Dom2 now kills 1 unit out of a 80 strong army. Another weakening of how effective magic is.

Alot of magic, especially battlefield magic needs a little strenghening, especially early on.

[llamabeast]

Interesting. I definitely wouldn't myself think that magic as a whole needs to be stronger. By turn 30 or 40 mages can lay down a ridiculous carpet of fire that can annihilate the most powerful of conventional armies. I wouldn't want it to be any stronger.

You may be right though that early magic could be more powerful. I suppose it would be nice if a powerful F3 mage was able to hold his own even without any research. But I don't find I really have any strong feelings on this. I'm fairly happy with it as it is I think.

One thing I don't like so much is the extremely magic-dominated late-game, although I suspect that's because I haven't got good at it yet. It's sad when real armies don't matter at all against hordes of SCs and Ghost Riders. I think myself I would probably like to nerf a few high-powered spells (Tartarian Gate, Ghost Riders, Fog Warriors, Will of the Fates, Army of Lead, Arcane Nexus perhaps), and also make gem-producing items harder to forge. But again I'm not sure of my own opinion on the subject.

[quantum_mechani]

Meglobob said:

Other than Divine Bless, Smite, site searching spells, a little constuction for magic items and mages to do research the majority of nations already effectively ignore magic for the first 20 - 30 turns of the game.

Virtually all magic has very little influence on battles, with the sole exception of divine bless/bless for the first 20 - 30 turns. The average length of a MP game of Dom3 is 60 - 90 turns before a winner is declared, so for a 1/3 of the game magic has little or no influence on the game.

In Dom3 what do most players complain about? What threads attract the most debate? The answer is unfair blesses on certain nations sacreds, how unfair a elephant/mammoth rush is on nations like Ulm. With magic being so weak in the early part of the game, a strong bless nation or elephant/mammoth rush can only be stopped by a strong bless of your own, a awake pretender or stong/lucky diplomacy.

Magic needs boosting, especially battlefield magic and especially low level battlefield magic. Increasing AOE or number of effects or precision on certain spells would help game balance alot, especially early game balance.

From Dom2 to Dom3 quickness got nerfed, so the number of spells you could cast on a battlefield effectively got halfed. A big nerf to magic. At the same time army sizes increased from Dom2 to Dom3, so a spell with 1 effect killed 1 unit out of 50 strong army in Dom2 now kills 1 unit out of a 80 strong army. Another weakening of how effective magic is.

Alot of magic, especially battlefield magic needs a little strenghening, especially early on.

I can't say I agree at all, there are plenty of nations with makes lots of use of battlefield magic. Nations like Marignon and Caelum would be crazy not to research some level of evocation if they are fighting an early war. A big part of what made/makes Helhiem so fearsome isn't just it's bleess troops, it's the wide array of powerful battlefield spells they can back it up with (skelly spam, lightning bolts, thunder strike, blade wind, magma eruption). It's true that people are reluctant to commit battle mages in the early game, but that is simply because higher research magic even stronger.

And all that aside, the basic way magic is used hasn't changed much at all since dom2. People didn't drag their mages off of research duty without a very good reason there either.

I won't argue there are a lot of very weak early battlefield spells that could really use improvement, but the proportion of strong ones to weak ones is about the same as anywhere else in the game.