Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?

[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.

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Scott Hebert:

3) Change the way the Magic Duel works. Perhaps make it less random. There are very few ways that this would actually work, though.

Unless I'm mistaken, there's a mod out there that changed the way Magic Duel worked, which seemed to be pretty well thought out.

It added a healthy fatigue cost for the spell, and the addition of an Astral gem for casting it, making it much less likely that someone would have mages spam-casting it as standard strategy.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by 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.

Communion has always boosted astral magic in Dom2, which is the relevant statistic for magic duel. The information that it did not help against magic duel most likely comes from a bug in the earliest Versions of Dom1, where the person who cast magic duel always won.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Blitz:
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.

Golden Era is fine! You're just not USING it right. Return of the Raptors, Barbarian Kings, and New Era are STILL the crummier of the themes by far. If you don't believe me, I'll be happy to pummel you with it.

[ June 22, 2004, 00:35: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

[Blitz]

Most people disagree with you on that one it would seem Norfleet. And while I wouldn't mind playing a game against you sometime, I'm not sure your winning or losing would prove much when it comes to Golden Era's strength in the grand scheme of things.

You wouldn't concede that it is weaker than standard Arco?

[ June 22, 2004, 00:42: Message edited by: Blitz ]

[Norfleet]

Different, yes. Weaker...not really. You give up the Astrologer, and his full random pick, but you do gain the Philosophers, which are excellent researchers, and the very nice Engineers, a great boon to my castle stalling tactics...alas, they tend to be capitol only and move slowly, but I can forge flying shoes to get them to the front. The only annoyance is the difficulty in making them stop showing up when I press "n", but I get around this by assigning them to untrained blood hunt duty to keep them out of my way.

Yeah, the troops are nigh-unaffordable, and often capitol only as well. So what? It's not a troop theme, obviously.

[Blitz]

It's neither troop based, nor mage based (losing astrologer). That's basicly they key right there isn;t it?

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Blitz:
It's neither troop based, nor mage based (losing astrologer). That's basicly they key right there isn;t it?

I feel that the Philosophers, Engineers, and Sceptic makes up for the minor loss of the Astrologer's one random. You can cover most of your bases there just by taking ze death or ze blood on your pretender, both of which are easy to then jumpstart as a result. Combined with the superior research efficiencies of the Philosopher, who is cheap enough that you can easily churn them out one a turn from turn 1, GE is very much a magocracy.

Besides, with sloth, you can't really afford to buy enough of your troops to do more than serve as bodyguards, anyway.

[PvK]

I don't think GE Arco is weak, but like Mictlan, it might not be intuitive to everyone how to most effectively use it. The sloth slows down heavy troop production, but since they rarely die when used well, and afflicted ones can all be healed, they can accumulate into a numerous enough army, even if they aren't the emphasis. The Wind Riders, Wind Lords, and Myrmidon Champions can all be given extra equipment and so made into nice recruitable thugs, too.

PvK

[Blitz]

don't think GE Arco is weak, but like Mictlan, it might not be intuitive to everyone how to most effectively use it

Been hearing this a lot. Perhaps people might care to enlighten us on their troopless, astrologer-free arcocephale strategies. Sure the Skeptic isn't awful, and the engineer can do some interesting things, but where's the beef folks?

Regular arco isn't that much weaker in a summoning strategy, albiet losing the earth/air gem income and better researcher. It's not like arco has horrible researchers in base, and you don't need THAT many air gems to summon an air queen.