Balancing Wrathful Skies

[tinkthank]

Chazar said:
So I do not think that Wrathful Skies is too powerful: Just try out to rely on it and see where that ends! Sure, you can destroy an army with seemingly nothing by using it, but the cost-effectiveness results from the fact that your opponent will never rebuilt that army because he thinks that wrathful skies is so powerful.

But I think this is just the point. Jeffr just said it very well: Because Wrathful Skies exists as it does, there is a strong disincentive to produce armies of national troops. This is not a "problem" from a balance perspective, since you can make something else (as Boron does) but from a "fun" perspective, which is in my opinion even more important: Viable, multifaceted options with which this game is overabundant become suboptimal, and that reduces the number of competetive strategies, and that is -- for me and obviously quite a few other players -- *less fun* if we are also interested in winning. Yes, WC can be dealt with; but doing so hampers a lot of the goodness of this excellent game and may potentially turn it into a less good one.

[Chazar]

No! Just keep on building those armies and keep on running against the enemy! It might be depressive, but you should grinde them down. One cannot defend every single province at once and wrathing squads are limited by the available gems. For 1000gp you can produce quite a nice number of troops (in case of a sensible productivity scale). Does wrathful skies protect against Ashen Empire in a long run? Propably not, and neither against hordes of average men at arms backed up by few better units...

PS: I think the problem really is that people are just too afraid to loose/use all those affectionately built little neat toy soldiers, even though it would be sensible to do so!

[tinkthank]

I'd like to think as you do, but I can't.

Once the initial investment has been made (3 or 4 Staffs of Storms, with Vanheim these are automatically forged with hammers, a couple of Air mages, perhaps some path-boosters, and AQ if you want) there is an exceptionally small diminishing return to continue to cast WC. 3 or 4 WC raiding-parties (and note: they dont *have* to Cloud Trapeze in; in fact, they are usually quite more devastating if they use normal movement, since then no normal army can move on top of them during the movement phase -- also note that some of the more conspicuous WC casters are also exceptionally stealthy (Van, Man LoT)) will be able to raze more than you can produce, and they need 6-8 air gems per turn. It is very difficult to make armies to match that. Almost any nation will have 8 airgems per turn by midgame, and an Air nation will often have a lot more than that.
So although I would like to continue to beat my head against a wall in a fun way, I will eventually run out of money while my opponent will fail to run out of air gems.

Also, I was taking what you said (what I quoted) very seriously: He who meets a WC-spammer will, as you say yourself, no longer build those armies. Schade!

[Boron]

tinkthank said:
I'd like to think as you do, but I can't.

Once the initial investment has been made (3 or 4 Staffs of Storms, with Vanheim these are automatically forged with hammers, a couple of Air mages, perhaps some path-boosters, and AQ if you want) there is an exceptionally small diminishing return to continue to cast WC. 3 or 4 WC raiding-parties (and note: they dont *have* to Cloud Trapeze in; in fact, they are usually quite more devastating if they use normal movement, since then no normal army can move on top of them during the movement phase -- also note that some of the more conspicuous WC casters are also exceptionally stealthy (Van, Man LoT)) will be able to raze more than you can produce, and they need 6-8 air gems per turn. It is very difficult to make armies to match that. Almost any nation will have 8 airgems per turn by midgame, and an Air nation will often have a lot more than that.
So although I would like to continue to beat my head against a wall in a fun way, I will eventually run out of money while my opponent will fail to run out of air gems.

Also, I was taking what you said (what I quoted) very seriously: He who meets a WC-spammer will, as you say yourself, no longer build those armies. Schade!

No Chazar is right imo . Normally there is plenty of money available . 100 fire gems give you between 1500-4500 money . By early lategame you will have 100 fever fetishes .

So just keep storming with e.g. 10 armies of 30 flaggellants or pikeneers and 20 x-bows and 1 or 2 inquisitors almost every turn . Such an army costs about 600-700 gold but can overcome small obstacles and maybe even thugs .
Firegems and thus money is in much higher quantities available then airgems in a normal game .

As Chazar says Wrathful skies is still quite an investment .

[Turin]

Boron said:
No Chazar is right imo . Normally there is plenty of money available . 100 fire gems give you between 1500-4500 money . By early lategame you will have 100 fever fetishes .

So just keep storming with e.g. 10 armies of 30 flaggellants or pikeneers and 20 x-bows and 1 or 2 inquisitors almost every turn . Such an army costs about 600-700 gold but can overcome small obstacles and maybe even thugs .
Firegems and thus money is in much higher quantities available then airgems in a normal game .

As Chazar says Wrathful skies is still quite an investment .

I don´t know about your math, but you could just alchemize those 40 firegems you need for 600 gold(27 with alchemy stone) into 10/7 air gems and fuel your wrathful skies with them. You have to factor the upkeep of that army in as well(with strat move 1 they will take a long time to reach the enemy forts) . And the wrather doesn´t even have to cloud trapeze.

[Huzurdaddi]

Turin,

I am glad to see that someone else is playing the game game I am playing.

I don't have any idea why people would like to keep wrathful the way it is. The only possible reason I can see is so that they can beatdown on people who do not know about it's power and that is sad.

[Soapyfrog]

Or they have not witnessed first hand how early it can be obtained and how devastatingly effective it is. Saying you should just keep throwing troops at the wrathful squad is insanity... there is no effective counter at the research levels that wrathful can be obtained and effectively implemented.

Just for the record, I agree, wrathful is way too powerful.

[Boron]

Huzurdaddi said:
I don't have any idea why people would like to keep wrathful the way it is. The only possible reason I can see is so that they can beatdown on people who do not know about it's power and that is sad.

Cause it is boring to nerf everything into oblivion just for the sake of "perfect" balance .

Dominions is not Starcraft or Battle for Middleearth where balancing is easy because of only about 30 different units .

Maybe the requirements should be upped a bit but that's all . It should not be nerfed into oblivion like the VQ .

[Chazar]

Huzurdaddi said:
I don't have any idea why people would like to keep wrathful the way it is.

I have actually played Caelum quite often, and I have won most times, although my local friends were newbies like myself.

Despite being Caelum, I found it pretty difficult to use Wrathful Skies. Most times it did nothing or destroyed my own troops. Later on I learned some occasions where it was pretty useful to cast Wrathful Skies, but that are only a few. E.g. once I was overrun by Ashen Empire and Wrathful Skies seemed just ineffective. Another thing are enemy armies having scattered squads of fast troops (e.g. cavalary) which wipes out the chaff and the caster too fast for wrathful skies doing significant damage...

So maybe I am just stupid or inexperienced, but I learned that wrathful skies is not a cure to all situations, especially for the aggressive player.

However, these discussions avail nothing. Let's play rather...!