Forthcoming patch notes

[mac5732]

I would like to see hard AI nations to beat, most games I play are SP (time restraints etc) So i love to see challenging AI players, the harder the better, makes for a lot more fun if the AI can beat the human player, makes the human player have to really work to win, instead of taking it for granted that he'll eventually beat the AI....

[Micah]

I'm going to go on record to say that I'm really not a fan of the BE change, outside of the effect it has on MoD. I have always liked Dominions because it wasn't just a matter of two huge armies beating on one another. Even with all of the magic and options the game often comes down to a game of resource management, and I believe this change takes away some of the most powerful tactics available to deal with an enemy in an elegant fashion.

The current tactic of teleporting a BE caster which can then flee the battlefield and a unit to stick around and entertain the enemy army while the BE does its work is one of my personal favorites. While it can be brutally effective it also carries a lot of risk, as a reasonable blocker unit will have to be fairly well equipped, and if the blocking unit is taken down the BE will end. I don't think many people have a problem with this working the way it does.

The current 50-turn battle limit is another reason this tactic is so important. Having an army that's simply large enough to absorb the losses inflicted by an SC should NOT be a valid tactic, but it becomes one as soon as this change goes live. It's a joy seeing golems at full HP evaporate on turn 50 in the middle of chasing down a couple of crippled stragglers from the enemy army, believe me.

By forcing the caster to stick around (necessarily behind a large wall of chaff to keep them alive) the game devolves more towards a phyrric style of play, in which tactics become a secondary concern to resources. It becomes quite difficult to defeat an opposing army without suffering significant losses unless you have appropriate resistances on your troops, and the ability to respond to a distant threat is severely curtailed, since mobility spells become insufficient to move enough chaff to protect the caster.

Granted, many of these things aren't bad in and of themselves, but they certainly change the flavor and balance of the game in a major way beyond what a simple bug fix ought to, IMO, and it does it by removing a large section of available tactics, not by adding or adjusting ones that are in place.

I don't think this will change the minds of those in charge, but I wanted to at least have a eulogy for one of my favorite things about the game.

[Lingchih]

I agree with Micah that the overall nerfing of battlefield enchantments, so that the caster cannot retreat and still have his spell active, is too much. True, this would fix the Mists of Deception cheat, but it also severely limits other tactics that are not considered cheats.

I would ask that the Devs rethink this before they release the next patch.

[Jazzepi]

Personally I'm glad to see air queen 1 + air queen 2 = army anywhere on the map destroyed, gone from the game. The whole process of having a mage who can cast a BE enchantment, and then leave, without maintaining it, but then if they die while they're still there, it goes away, seems nonthematic, and silly to me. If you're going to cast heat from hell, grip of winter, quagmire, solar brilliance, then you better be damn well willing to risk that mage in the fight that the mage is bringing his value to. By letting mages retreat from battle, that risk/reward ratio is severely impaired by simply removing a good deal of risk.

If anything, it just seems like your complaint is more about the low turn limit. Since armies can get so large, especially in the late game, I wouldn't mind seeing the 50 turn limit raised.

I mean, the whole reason you put a turn limit is to prevent fights from going on into infinity, but the cap should be something high enough that you only reach it /when/ fights would go onto infinity. Right now the problem is that you reach the cap with a regular army.

I think a 200 turn hard limit would probably be fine.

Anyways, bravo on resolving a long standing bug.

Jazzepi

[Lingchih]

And what would a 200 turn limit do to those of us with slower processors? I agree that it would be nice, but would it be playable?

[Jazzepi]

Lingchih said:
And what would a 200 turn limit do to those of us with slower processors? I agree that it would be nice, but would it be playable?

I don't think it would do anything but effect the turn processing time. The battleview itself would run at the same speed, though it might take longer to watch the whole thing.

The change would be mostly transparent for people playing MP since the turn processes would be done on the host machine. Also, you probably wouldn't hit that 200 turn limit cap too often.

Jazzepi

[Micah]

Upping the turn limit would help, it's true, although an SC taking 150 turns to clear things out wouldn't get any of the mages, which is one of the nice things about the BEs...you actually do some real damage to your unprepared opponent.

And the key here really is that they have to be unprepared. I certainly wouldn't drop a pair of AQs into an enemy army that was slinging around any of the myriad SC-killer spells (Life for a life, gifts from heaven, enslave mind/soul slay, weapons of sharpness + strength of giants, Stream of life/CHARM...and all of those have excellent range aside from charm, there are plenty more short range ones) so your claim that any army on the map can be killed by a couple of queens is pretty laughable.

The other reason just fixing the turn limit still isn't what I'd like to see is because of cheap summon chaff. Skel spam is already incredibly powerful in a lot of situations, and if you have critical mass of mages they can keep it up for 50 turns or 5000. I've been buried in imps from lifelong protections. An unending supply of ghost wolves should not be enough to fend off an avenging nephilim until he gets bored and wanders off. BE's are supposed to be the ultimate answer to over-bloated but improperly constructed armies. Hell, it's in the rulebook. Let them do their job.

[Jazzepi]

Micah said:
The other reason just fixing the turn limit still isn't what I'd like to see is because of cheap summon chaff. Skel spam is already incredibly powerful in a lot of situations, and if you have critical mass of mages they can keep it up for 50 turns or 5000. I've been buried in imps from lifelong protections. An unending supply of ghost wolves should not be enough to fend off an avenging nephilim until he gets bored and wanders off. BE's are supposed to be the ultimate answer to over-bloated but improperly constructed armies. Hell, it's in the rulebook. Let them do their job.

I don't see how that has anything to do with the BE

Obviously the quote about two air queens killing any army was an exercise in hyperbole, but a properly equipped air queen can push her MR to something like 28 or so. All she needs then is regen and two shields to hold off chaff indefinitely. Especially if the opponent has their mages to the far back (which tends to be the default position).

About the only thing I'd be afraid of then would be petrify and drain life, and that's only if the chaff doesn't move fast enough while the air queen is buffing that the mages don't get caught in the back casting self-buffs, and then spamming useless spells.

Jazzepi

[quantum_mechani]

Jazzepi said:
About the only thing I'd be afraid of then would be petrify and drain life

Personally, life for life and gifts from heaven are what terrify my SCs the most.

[Tifone]

Really I don't understand all this hatred against the turn limit

As this game is supposed to work well even on low-level systems, pumping up this limit would render the waiting between turns a lot longer... can you imagine 200 turn battles in a large map with 15 nations? Heeek!

2nd, I think a not so long turn limit makes perfect sense. After all, a turn just represent a month and (unless teleportations, which still take time for magic preparatives) involves the preparatives for the equipment tents and stuff, the trip from one region to another, the battle which takes days... And it's not easy to fight and stay in a province under the direct control of the enemy - after some time, you want or not, an army has to fall back for resupplying, regathering troops, reorganize formations. And both the attacker and the defender have their right to see their reinforcements on the march from the neighbour provinces come after some time battling - they are not fighting endlessy in a limbo separed from the physic world.
As it is IMHO, the turn limit gives plenty of time for a strong attacker to kill many, many units. But if it is unable to kill/rout all of them before 50 turns, he just wasn't strong enough to do it in just one month. He reorganizes, receives the reinforcements, the defender does so, and the fight begins again.

The only minor problem came from MoD (solved) and the other few tactics - usually spells - not working as stated, with units non-retreating after their time and the defender dying. Vengeance of the Dead i.e.