But do you really like SC in dominions2 ?

Graeme Dice · #1 March 1st, 2005, 12:15 PM

I have absolutely no problems with SCs as they currently stand, as they are vital to prevent the game from devolving into a zerg rush of "whoever has the most troops wins".

Oversway · #2 March 1st, 2005, 12:35 PM

The point about having life drain still stands, even if you remove trampling from the equation.

Quote:

I have absolutely no problems with SCs as they currently stand, as they are vital to prevent the game from devolving into a zerg rush of "whoever has the most troops wins".

I'd say that SCs are not the only thing to prevent such a problem. Area effect spells, battle field summons, trample, artillary spells, etc. prevent this as well.

The Panther · #3 March 1st, 2005, 01:56 PM

Ice devils do not have a trample attack. If they did, then they would never be used as a solo SC.

I personally like SCs. But I HATE the idea of a single SC taking on an infinite number of troops because of life drain. SCs ought to complement your army, not substitute for it. An equivalent sized army fight, one with a couple of SCs and one without, now THAT would be a cool battle. I would certainly bet on the army that contained the SCs even without life drain in the equation, which is only proper.

Somebody made a comment above about the risk of sending in an SC to battle. They do die, that's for sure. But SCs survive a lot more often when accompanied by a real army.

I truly believe all that is really needed to balance SCs is a method to ensure that ANY SC dies to pretty much any medium sized army when going solo. Fatigue is likely the proper answer to making that happen.

BigDaddy · #4 March 1st, 2005, 02:13 PM

Can you add encumbrance to the life stealing weapons? If so we could run some tests to see how much is fair.

Ironhawk · #5 March 1st, 2005, 06:17 PM

This statement completely overlooks the tactical scripting of a well designed army. The last... three or so games I have played haven't had any SC's at all (due to house rules) and its most certainly not just "who has the most troops wins". Placing your army correctly, knowing your troops and the enemy troops, and scripting intelligently has allowed me to defeat "superior" forces on a number of occassions.

One could make an argument that placing/scripting these armies and understanding the tactics of your opponent is no different than designing and scripting SCs and anti-SCs to fight your enemy. And that seems valid to me... but honestly I like watching big armies of men duke it out on the battlefield. So much more epic! Tho I would like to see the hero-style SCs that people were suggesting, rather than mega-army-killers.

Quote:

Graeme Dice said:
I have absolutely no problems with SCs as they currently stand, as they are vital to prevent the game from devolving into a zerg rush of "whoever has the most troops wins".

Oversway · #6 March 1st, 2005, 06:28 PM

How many militia (or some other troop type, if you like) are people thinking a 'hero-style' SC should be able to kill on average? Ten? Twenty?

Ironhawk · #7 March 1st, 2005, 08:11 PM

10-20 decent units sounds pretty good. That's enough that they will have an impact on the battle but not so much that they will crush you utterly if you dont have a special defense.

You know... something that might be interesting would be to have "hero units" as a normal non-commander troop. And they randomly appeared at your capital, much like how maenads or those seahorse for Ocenia do. They would be uber-troops and you could drop them into your normal formations for some extra punch or something? Tho of course they would have to appear at a much slower rate...

Quote:

Oversway said:

How many militia (or some other troop type, if you like) are people thinking a 'hero-style' SC should be able to kill on average? Ten? Twenty?

PvK · #8 March 1st, 2005, 06:56 PM

Quote:

Graeme Dice said:
I have absolutely no problems with SCs as they currently stand, as they are vital to prevent the game from devolving into a zerg rush of "whoever has the most troops wins".

"Vital" in the sense that they are one thing that makes the game not "whoever has the most troops wins".

However I think there are plenty of other things that also accomplish that. I almost never use SC's, and I love the game, especially when I'm just using troops and "thugs" and other stuff.

PvK

BigDaddy · #9 March 1st, 2005, 07:30 PM

I've never tried this on well developed SC's before, but don't magical SC's (like air queens) suck against ether warriors, and demon SC's suck against a couple groups of angels of the host?

Taqwus · #10 March 1st, 2005, 07:49 PM

If they can do more damage than is restored per turn, perhaps. A well-equipped air queen with mirror image might be hard to hit.

There's always Pan CW for being hell on enemy SCs; defense goes down with many attacks on the same turn, and sleep vines get 3 per with each hit delivering armor-negating unresistable fatigue damage... and there's no attack vs. defense roll on those already unconscious. Anybody unconscious and facing more sleep vines is therefore likely to never wake up.

In the more general case, the aforementioned elf banes, solar lances, moon blades, even bane blades and banefire archers (decay, and potentially many MR checks per salvo) and banefire (massive unresistable damage with a chance of decay) should help. Curse should help versus those relying on life draining instead of regeneration or recuperation, as a blind SC won't fight very well.

In extremis, I wonder how many Crystal Mages it would take to reliably slap one with Gifts from Heaven. 150 points of pure physical damage is not to be laughed at.