Paralysis is overpowered.

[Edi]

Keep this thread civil or sooner or later people will start accumulating infractions. That's definitely not something you want to do, as several of them don't expire ever. Take a look at the forum FAQ if you are not familiar with what they are. And once you get enough of them, not even paralyze will help you against a SC Administrator wielding the Ban Hammer.

As of now, nobody's gotten them yet, but we're keeping tabs on the thread.

[Agema]

If you're using a SC to single-handedly take down a large and well magic-supported army, arguably you deserve everything you get. You don't casually toss around hundreds-strong armies, you shouldn't casually toss around SCs either.

I sort of get the feeling that if you don't want to suffer defeats by your SC getting massively paralysed all the time, take him in with an army containing a few high-HP chaff, or just make sure your army is big enough to cope with the enemy's army even with your SC paralysed. I'd like to think if your opponent has a load of astral mages spamming paralyse to take down one SC, you should have an equal number of similar level mages spamming spells of their own to cripple your opponent's army. Never mind paralyse, I found getting an SC horror marked to oblivion pretty depressing, but on the other hand, at least I now know to take a lot more care when marching them into battle against astral nations. Swallow the pain and change your tactics for next time.

[sum1lost]

I'd like to bring up an example in which the turn limit was my only effective measure against one early game supercombatant.

In aquarium, I had my first war against MA Arco, who was running an equipped SC titan. Said SC titan is still in the hall of fame some 40+ turns after its death, alongside some late-game SCs. It walked through at least two or three armies of double blessed eagle warriors, not to mention several secondary groups of mundane troops. I was having a tough battle as it was against the elephant/hypasist/mystic communions that were already going on, though I was winning, and the thing was unstoppable- even solo.

It finally ran into a province where I had some nature mages, and their sleep-spam was fruitless.

What did work was when, two turns later, it ran into an army with a moon mage carrying penetration equipment. The moon mage got two paralzyes through in the course of the battle, but even paralyzed, I couldn't scratch its armour, and its fear aura routed my army.

I think I finally ended its reign of terror a bit later with a number of phantasmal wolves combined with paralyze spam, which managed to kill it via the turn limit.

If it helps any, I thought of it as being locked into stasis by the illusions and mental magics of my mages, never again to terrorize my warriors.

[sector24]

K is by no means the only one with a "unique" style of persuasion. It's basically a staple of the internet to make grandiose claims, stereotype arguments and people into classes. Everyone should be held accountable for their poor style, but at the same time no one should be singled out. So just for fun, here are some internet logical fallacies:

1) If A is B then A is not C
I call this the female transitive property (jokingly of course) because it's the essence of the "does this dress make me look fat?" joke.

Basically when a girl asks you if this dress makes you look fat, she has trapped you into losing an argument before you even answer. If you say yes, then you are an idiot and deserve what you get, but if you say no, the female transitive property states that while "this" dress does not make her look fat she incorrectly infers that a dress exists that does make her look fat, hence she is fat and you're a jerk.

Logically speaking, the relationship between A and B has nothing to do with the relationship between A and C, but oh so frequently this is a common tactic used to win arguments or at least provide a situation where there are only losers.

2) If A is not B, A is C
Sort of the inverse of #1, and uses the same logical fallacy. This is the "if paralyze is nerfed in any way it becomes useless." Not that I'm poking fun at K, because he has a valid point; he just uses an exceedingly poor argument to demonstrate it. It would be like if you were at a job interview and you wanted $124,000 a year, and your future employer countered with $68,000. "$68,000?!? That's the same as $0! You're a jerk!" Well no, you start high, they counter, you negotiate. Maybe paralyze would become suboptimal, but I think a formula could be derived that was less than a current number but still viable. So we start with paralyze lasting the whole battle, counter with open ended d6, and negotiate. But if you don't want to negotiate, this is a quick way to end the argument. If the argument lasted any longer I'm sure someone would have said, "anything more than oe d6 is overpowered" and used the same fallacious argument in the opposite direction. (Again, I don't mean to offend and honestly I think some people get way too much crap for their style of persuasion, especially from people who use their own fallacious tactics in return.)

3) If A is not B, recalculate until A is B
When logic is not on your side, why use logic? Instead, of reading the other person's post and addressing their argument, just reword your argument and post it again. This is a great tactic for forcing your adversary to lay all their cards out on the table. They counter the same argument with basically every unique counter argument they have, and you haven't tipped your hand in the slightest. Your original argument doesn't even have to be good, you just need some discipline and tenacity.

If A is not C and B is not C, A is B
This usually stems from a 3-way argument in which A makes a reasonable argument, but then B (who agrees with A) makes a less reasonable argument. A clever person will not address A specifically, but will say that A and B are both arguments against C and since B is wrong, everything that has been said so far is wrong. I have to be honest, this is the best fallacious reasoning ever and it works all the time. Try it!

So the delicious irony is now you get to read this post and show how fallacious my examples are, thereby making me look oh so foolish. Have fun!

[K]

Originally Posted by sector24

2) If A is not B, A is C
Sort of the inverse of #1, and uses the same logical fallacy. This is the "if paralyze is nerfed in any way it becomes useless." Not that I'm poking fun at K, because he has a valid point; he just uses an exceedingly poor argument to demonstrate it.

This is a strawman argument for those watching at home. My argument has been exaggerated because it is then becomes easier to refute.

My argument was: "Considering that any nerf on the duration of the spell would make it useless against regular armies, and it can be easily countered anyway, any change might as well be a straight deletion of the spell. Simply put, not having a spell on the casting list is better than having a useless spell." When taken into context with the proposed reductions that were extremely drastic, this argument's only flaw is that someone could counter argue that an average of three turns of Paralysis that people were proposing would NOT make it useless against regular armies OR that it might be a good thing for it to be useless against armies (though to be fair, NTJedi had an incomplete proposal that may not have been as drastic).

My argument has then been exaggerated into "if paralyze is nerfed in any way it becomes useless." This argument is completely unreasonable and very simple, and so it is easy to dismiss. It completely ignores my point that the proposed reductions would make the spell useless against armies and with the nominal effect it would have an SCs it might as well be removed.

-------------

There is a big difference between a generalization and a stereotype. A generalization allows for exceptions, while a stereotype does not. For example, the generalization that "the sun comes up every day" is a form of support for an argument that the sun will come up tomorrow, but it would not disprove an argument that tomorrow the sun will not come up.

The people advocating nerfing Paralyze have only used arguments that involved removing the spell's negative effects on SCs. Therefore, as a general rule and based on the available data, people who want to nerf Paralyze are also advocating strengthening the role of SCs. This does not mean that exceptions don't exist or that those exceptions would disprove the general rule.

Considering that the generalization was not part of my argument but was more an a rhetorical observation, calling attention to it is actually an attempt to distract from my actual argument.

My apologies if this has caused any offense. I'm learning that logic and formal argument has no place in the internet and that people will never forgive you for using logic and math to prove that their beliefs are transparent or just plain wrong.

From now on, I'll stick to info-dumps for newbies to the game.

Cheers.

[Zeldor]

No way I'm reading all that posts, but:

Jazzepi:
I had Tartarian that got around 7-10 afflictions in one battle just from Decay. He did not die, but had to spend some time with Chalice to get back to fighting condition. He was feebleminded, crippled, lost an arm, lost his only eye etc... and yeah, he got like 200-300 years in one battle.

[Herode]

Presumably not more than 250 if Decay gives +5 years / combat round & if the limit is still at round 50.

[capnq]

Originally Posted by Herode

Presumably not more than 250 if Decay gives +5 years / combat round & if the limit is still at round 50.

The attacker automatically starts trying to retreat at round 50. He has until round 75 to get off the battlefield alive.

[Foodstamp]

K don't sweat it. Often times people find a chance at comradeship through rallying together to kick a person while they perceive multiple other people do not share the same view point.

As far as the paralyze thing goes. This like past disagreements become such simply because neither side is right because your discussing a mechanic in a video game that is so complex that balance discussions eventually boil down to opinion. Often your opinion may not be the same as most people and that opens the door to ganging up and put downs, but those people can't take away your birthday so stick to what you think is right unless something more tangible than "your a cheater and a big fat doodoo head" sways your opinion.

[Archonsod]

Define overpowered. Paralyze doesn't win you the game, in fact if you take a single mage spamming paralyze and pit him against a mere 10 militia I suspect the argument would be that paralyze is quite underpowered.

Someone posted a save not so long ago in which a paralyzed SC obliterated the attacking army. I watched my sphinx (not paralyzed, but immobile nonetheless) tear it's way through greater horrors last night through the simple expedient of casting fire shield. So even a paralyzed SC can be dangerous.

It's not a case of overpowered, simply bad luck. Boosting MR reduces the risk of paralyze and similar spells working, but it doesn't negate them completely. In this case, the fact paralyze worked is simply bad luck. It's no different from having Bogus & co turn up and kill your pretender while he's off killing indeps.

It's just the opposite side of the coin from the times when your single SC defeats and entire army because your opponent was expecting to be attacked by a horde. Only thing you can do is shrug and chalk it up to experience. Tactics and spells are like a toolbox, sometimes you get the right tool for the job, sometimes you find yourself holding a hammer when you really needed a wrench.

Oh, and if you want to complain about circular arguments when Doms 3 was released I remember these forums full of people complaining SC's were still too powerful in the new version, and we should have the game immediately patched with new ways to stop them