lategame balance . are my concerns true ?

[Boron]

Cainehill said:

Actually, given your previous Posts mentioning clam hoarding and using the wish spell, it sounds like Wish is the thing that is too powerful, because you can make any number of very highly overpowered late game strategies using it.

Which is why, I believe, there's an official mod that removes Wish from the game. End of problem.

Without Wish, you don't have a relatively cheap way to boost all your magic paths, you don't have the incentive to put high astral magic on your (typically immortal) pretender, and it becomes quite difficult to have _all_ the spells, items, and summonses you're talking about.

removing wish would be really bad because it disadvantages those nations for which it was designed more likely too much .
especially ryleh + atlantis are those nations .


abysia + mictlan can get a pretty high blood hunt blood income too .
so not wish is the real problem but that vampire lords are just too cheap .

all in all it is a combo :
-blood is easy aquireable
-clams are good
-with the astral pearls from clams wish becomes quite useful
-one of the best wishes is wishing for blood
-vampire lords are probably the nonunique bloodsummon with the highest RoI

all these facts play into the strength of vampires .
every nation can start making clams midgame when you summon a few spectres .


the only other thing which is similiar effective because it is too cheap is massproducing tartarians in combination with healing + goring the good ones and turning them into SCs .

[Boron]

Graeme Dice said:

Better hope you don't run into Marignon then, because any province they take will only stay in your dominion for one turn.

true but marignon is relative 1 dimensional and hard to play .
in the mp games i have played until now or are playing marignon was never a top 5 choice and i never saw them winning a mp game in which i am in so far .


another thing you wrote that you can decimate my vampires with flames from the sky too .
if you kill them in my dominion they are respawned in my capitol .
so you invested 20/40/60 or more fire gems for just 1-3 turns delayment until they arrive at the front again .
not a really useful use of flames from the sky imho .


the 2 nations which i think are best for my hoardstrat are atm abysia and caelum .
abysia earlier , caelum later because there midlevel alteration/conjuration/construction are my research priorities earlygame-midgame .

[Cainehill]

Boron said:

removing wish would be really bad because it disadvantages those nations for which it was designed more likely too much .
especially ryleh + atlantis are those nations .

Actually, I think Wish was designed for SP games more than it was "designed" for R'lyeh and Atlantis.

The other thing about your strategy - it might work once against a given set of players, but the next time they play against you and see you taking one of the blood or astral nations, they're simply going to go out of their way to stomp you early, instead of going after independents.

[DLC1]

i dont think your concerns are all that grave, vampires are generally weak, any kind of devil with the late game blood 9 summons are better.
cept mebbe frost devils

[Boron]

Cainehill said:

Actually, I think Wish was designed for SP games more than it was "designed" for R'lyeh and Atlantis.

The other thing about your strategy - it might work once against a given set of players, but the next time they play against you and see you taking one of the blood or astral nations, they're simply going to go out of their way to stomp you early, instead of going after independents.

players should play without having earlier games in mind .
nobody can win if several players ally earlygame against him .


since most ppl who play dominions are very mature and know that this would be childish making pregame alliances only to take revenge because they lost in an earlier game i hope it doesn't happen anyways .

edit :
p.s. i remember that in an older post i think either gandalf or johan said that clams were designed for atlantis especially .
so i think you can say wish was designed for them too cause wish is one of the best uses for your clam astral pearls

[Graeme Dice]

Boron said:
true but marignon is relative 1 dimensional and hard to play.
in the mp games i have played until now or are playing marignon was never a top 5 choice and i never saw them winning a mp game in which i am in so far .

Marignon isn't that hard to play. They just need to figure out a good strategy for the lategame, since they are about the second most powerful nation in the very early game.

Astral fires can deal with flame immune units, and they have no trouble getting that spell. They also have a fairly easy time with covering the battlefield with fire, which vampires will fall to quite easily. Once they capture your province, four or five high inquisitors will bring the dominion down to zero in a single turn, and then you can't bring your vampires into it anymore.

another thing you wrote that you can decimate my vampires with flames from the sky too .
if you kill them in my dominion they are respawned in my capitol .

You would time the flames from the sky with a major attack so that the enemy would lose territory.

[quote]

so you invested 20/40/60 or more fire gems for just 1-3 turns delayment until they arrive at the front again .

Well, take Machaka for instance, they have little problem with throwing more than 100 fire gems a turn at any given problem by the time you'd reach turn 100. Hit a province you're invading with 5 flames from the sky, and there won't be many vampires left on defense. Hit a besieging force of vampires with that same 5 spells, and they won't be able to breach your walls anytime soon.

[Boron]

DLC1 said:
i dont think your concerns are all that grave, vampires are generally weak, any kind of devil with the late game blood 9 summons are better.

you neglect 1 thing there :
you pay 55 blood for 1 vampire lord
you pay 50 blood for 7+1/lvl above storm demons / devils etc. with the lvl 9 summon


after 20 turns 1 vampire lord has generated 20 vampires .

so the vampire lord beats after 20 turns with his 20 vampires which are for free surely the devils / storm demons etc.

in a 1on1 a vampire loses of course against a devil / storm demon .

but after 20 turns it is rather 3 vs 1 and after 40 turns rather 6 vs 1 for the same cost .
+ you have further costs to get a leader for your devils / storm demons .


and finally vampires are blood 7 so you can start casting them earlier . once you have your first vampire lord giving him a death staff he can then chainsummon further vampire lords .
getting a summoner for e.g. storm demons with blood5air2 is much harder .

[Cainehill]

Boron said:

players should play without having earlier games in mind .
nobody can win if several players ally earlygame against him .

Why? If I know that a particular player always does the same thing, why on earth wouldn't I use that knowledge? I'm not saying pre-game alliances, I'm saying that I'd target that player differently from another. If someone continually backstabs and breaks alliances - I'm not going to make treaties with that player.

If someone constantly plays wild gambles and then quits the game in a sulk when the gamble fails, I'm going to remember that and be prepared to counter it.

And if someone continually uses a particular strategy, why should I be stupid enough to cooperate with them by not attempting to disrupt it?

since most ppl who play dominions are very mature and know that this would be childish making pregame alliances only to take revenge because they lost in an earlier game i hope it doesn't happen anyways .

How is it revenge? If I know that you are playing to hoard astral gems and build vampire hordes, why should I ignore that, leave you alone, and let you get to your "unbeatable" end game strategy?

If you want to play the same strategy over and over again, damn straight I'm going to try and counter it. It's an old military chestnut: Know your enemy. Know what a given commander is prone to do, and try to use that against him.

Sorry, but I'm not going to play dumb - I know certain players are untrustworthy, and I keep that in mind. I know certain players like to use "rush" tactics, and if they're near me, I'm going to change my strategy to repulse them. If I know a certain player is going to do the same things over and over, like running a lone Virtue pretender way ahead of his armies, I'm going to try to trap and kill Anya.

And if I suspect someone is going to clam hoard and vampire horde, I'm going to try and clean their clock before they get that working.

(And for those who say, "Well, some games I play completely trustworthy, and some games I play completely backstabbing" - you get jotted down as untrustworthy.)

p.s. i remember that in an older post i think either gandalf or johan said that clams were designed for atlantis especially .
so i think you can say wish was designed for them too cause wish is one of the best uses for your clam astral pearls

Feh. There is a _lot_ of good uses for astral pearls, clam produced or not. For example: with a mere 20 clams, you can produce an extra 10 gems of _any_ kind each turn. Only have 1 nature gem coming in each turn but want to GoR or GoH? No problem - convert those clam pearls into nature gems. Now you want a lich, but don't have any death income? No problem.

Wish is basically a cheesy spell in MP games. IMO.

[Arryn]

DLC1 said:
i dont think your concerns are all that grave, vampires ...

A grave concern about vampires is an interesting pun.

[Boron]

i thought caine you meant you would simply berserk on me in every future game then and would be content if you had only killed me and are shortly after killed by someone else.


but as you describe you would act it is fine and not what i meant . i would do the same
of course i don't do only vampire hordes but different things too .
it is just whenever i can get some clams / vampires i hoard them knowing that they are good .


if i play e.g. abysia i plan on vampires or soul contracts and stock my blood . if i notice that someone wants to attack me early then of course i do summon devils e.g. and not wait until he kills me .

i just still think that vampires with all their special abilities and their cheapness are a bit too strong .

if someone masses storm demons you just counter by a few lighning immune summons / scs .
same with other examples .


but vampires come again and again which makes them the perfect defensive weapon and once you win the dominionwar or you get so many allysummons that they become disposible too they are even perfect offensive weapons .

so i can use 50% of my resources on vampires and 50% on other things for offense and send all offensive weapons knowing that the vampires are most probably enough to defeat anything which attacks me anyways at least after a couple of attempts .


if you can only beat a vampire horde by rushing the one trying to use it it is actually a proof that it really seems a bit overpowered . otherwise there would be no need to rush .
vampires are just the ultimative soldier in dominion . totally exposeable but strong enough to win many battles on their own already .



if you can name me one other unit which is an even better allrounder than the vampire and explain why then i will agree that i was wrong .
but otherwise this proofs that i am probably really right .