Balancing the blesses

[Foodstamp]

I don't think fire 9 is clearly the best bless.

[SelfishGene]

I'm rather torn on blesses.

OTOH, i hated Dom2s "build your SC" uberlevel gameplay. But i'm fearful Dom3 will be just a matter of spamming masses of the best 9/9 sacred troop by contrast.

I really do like how good sacreds, national troops, can beat all but the buffest SCs. It's just that they're really good against most everything else.

Maybe sleeping Pretenders need to sleep for two years instead of just one?

[Jazzepi]

I really don't understand why people are so bothered by sacred troops. On a properly sized map, because they can almost always only be produced in the capital, as the game wears on the blesses becomes less and less potent.

Sure starting out next to a guy with W9/F9 bless sucks when he blitzes you, but that's part of the game! He's giving up good scales, and early access to his pretender for some awesome early game units.

Jazzepi

[MaxWilson]

Don't blesses become obsolete as the game progresses? What's the difference between a W9 bless on a sacred unit and a Quickening spell on a regular army, except that the Quickening spell costs gems? B9 bless is similar to Strength of Giants (+4 Strength) except for the death curse, and S9 is somewhat similar to Will of the Fates (Twist Fate vs. Luck). There's no bless that's as good as Fog Warriors or Marble Warriors. Blesses are very easy to use and are great in the early game, but later on in the game the ability to cast battlefield enchantments on arbitrary units (either cheap chaff or powerful summons) should be just as good as a high bless[1] and costs zero design points.

-Max

[1] At least in set-piece battles. Blesses are less logistically cumbersome--casters and gems--and are probably better-suited to raiding parties than most battlefield enchantments are.

Edit: corrected misstatement about S9 bless/Sword of Aurgelmer.

[Nick_K]

In terms of effect power, quickening is much better than the W9 bless. Quickening grants an extra action every turn and +3 att/def. the bless is only every other turn and you don't get the att/def bonus from quickness (just the +4 def from the low-level bless).

[Tyrant]

F9 and W9 are the blesses that are problematic. Attack and defence skills are very difficult to buff with spells- there are no easy ways at all. On top of that there are very few mass summons that have high attack. So, to take the classic example of W9 Vans, once you add 4 defense to their already formidable defensive skills and Glamor you end up with a troop type that cannot be countered with regular troops, and then they get the excellent ability of Quickness on top of that. Quickness is a multiplier- the more deadly the unit, the better Quickness is. Same deal to a lesser extent with F9, hitting more often is good, but it better if you also do more damage. Again, it's a multiplier.
And the real kicker is that they work so well together.

So as i see it, it's the pairing of the excellent, universally useful and near unique skill bonuses with two other excellent 9 bless powers that causes the alleged problem.

One way to fix it would be to leave the L9 powers be and replace the L4 effects with something less useful. The other way would be to replace Quickness with another power.

Having said all this, I'm not fully convinced the problem is really all that bad. I've played quite a few games and i have yet to actually encounter the much discussed 9W/9F bless on the field of battle.

[TirAsleen]

Maybe spell path system should be like in aow1, taking fire paths exlude you from taking any water paths, death could exclude nature maybe and so on. Problem would be it would make the game less diverse. Onother solution would be to exclude just the blesses, or limit the game to just 1 single path9/10 bless along with minor blesses.

Depends how much people care for balance or more for diversity and RPG elements.

Just some suggestion as i do not really care about it so far as a w9/f9 costs a lot of design points, and that kind of powerplaying is pretty boring too, wonder where the reward is to see the game over screen more quickly.

[mivayan]

Xietor said:
Fire is clearly the best bless. E9 is not one of the best. 4 prot? That means zip really. Especially when you are being hit by f9 blessed troops with 2 attacks.

If your sacred has 13 prot, E9 should cut down the 6AP damage from flaming weapons by a *lot*. And cuts damage from spear using heavy infantry a lot too.

MaxWilson said:
What's the difference between a W9 bless on a sacred unit and a Quickening spell on a regular army, except that the Quickening spell costs gems?

But both is even more fun.