Balancing Wrathful Skies

[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 .

[Huzurdaddi]

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

Who said anything about "oblivion"? I would love to see wrathful nerfed but not into oblivion I want it still to be a choice but I don't want it to dictate how the game is played either.

What is boring is to have one dominant strategy ( wrathful ) and have all other stratgies be a concequence of that strategy (ie: only deploy lighting immune troops ).

It should not be nerfed into oblivion like the VQ .

The VQ was hardly nerfed into oblivion. It was nerfed such that it was not the most optimal pretender. The GK filled that role and hence he should be next on the chopping block.

Maybe the requirements should be upped a bit but that's all .

I agree. Something like A7 works dandy.

[jeffr]

If some unit/spell (in this case Wrathful Skies) is used by everyone, then it must be more powerful in relation to other units/spells. In this case, it's value for the cost(i.e. bang for the buck) should be reduced. You could decrease the bang, up the bucks (casting cost, casting level, research level, etc.) or both.

Units/Spells that are not used by anyone or seldom used should have their bang for the buck increased. Increase the bang (unit/spell power) and/or decrease the cost.

I believe Zen's mod attempts to do this.

Maybe in Dom3 there would be some way of capturing MP statistics on what spells/units were used the most/least. Over time, this would give a pretty good indication of what needed to be scaled up and what needed to be scaled down.

[Boron]

Huzurdaddi said:
Who said anything about "oblivion"? I would love to see wrathful nerfed but not into oblivion I want it still to be a choice but I don't want it to dictate how the game is played either.

What is boring is to have one dominant strategy ( wrathful ) and have all other stratgies be a concequence of that strategy (ie: only deploy lighting immune troops ).

The VQ was hardly nerfed into oblivion. It was nerfed such that it was not the most optimal pretender. The GK filled that role and hence he should be next on the chopping block.

Yeah but that's the problem . I agree that the VQ was too good but now after the VQ is nerfed if the GK gets also nerfed then if this is continued we end up by having all pretenders having equal stats .

Especially that the nerfed VQ is now taken away from Ermor is a thing i still don't understand as well .


The problem is really to know when to stop .

If the Gk would get a small bit nerfed like 25 new path costs and Wrathful skies needs A5 or so to be cast that could be a good idea but i am still not sure if it is really necessary at all .

[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...!

[Huzurdaddi]

Boron said:
Yeah but that's the problem . I agree that the VQ was too good but now after the VQ is nerfed if the GK gets also nerfed then if this is continued we end up by having all pretenders having equal stats .

Hardly. Perfect balance would be where every pretender has equal utility when employed optimally which in a rich game like dom2 != equal stats.

Chazar said:
Despite being Caelum, I found it pretty difficult to use Wrathful Skies

The classic forumla seems to be: 1 tank designed to last a good 10 turns (3 or 4 of those closing of the other side) + 1 wrathful caster with SoS scripted to retreat (for most nations this is a harbringer with Air nations they can use national mages ). This forumla, seen time and again, works wonders.

jeffr said:
Maybe in Dom3 there would be some way of capturing MP statistics on what spells/units were used the most/least. Over time, this would give a pretty good indication of what needed to be scaled up and what needed to be scaled down.

I agree, hard stats help a lot in figuring out what is going right/wrong.

[The_Tauren13]

Add a battlefield dispell of some sort.

[alexti]

Turin said:
to point out how ridicolously powerful wrathful skies is:
in the game "god is a bullet" c´tis invaded me with a force consisting of about 120 vine ogres 40 mages(lamia queens and shamans mostly), 50 longdead archers, 20 fairies and 4 tartarian titans. He has the gift of health up, so his troops were extra beefy even after entering my doinion.
So I did three things to greet him:
I cast flames from the sky(20 fire gems) , it killed 39 units.
I cast murdering winter(30 watergems) which killed 19 units

I cloud trapezed my wrathful skies caster in(4 air gems).
When the battle started 16 fairies,20 archers, 12 mages and a few vine ogres were already dead from the artillery spells. The battle lasted 5 turns(until his forces had reached my caster and triggered his ritual of returning) . During that short time wrathful skies killed 17 mages 23 archers and a few vineogres. His mages had mostly 15-20 hp due to the goh effect.

So the lvl 6 spell was far more powerful than the other two artillery spells(note that the battle resolved last, so there wasn´t as much to kill for wc) and it cost only 5 air gems.

What could c´tis do to avoid such a disaster?
1) Equip every mage with lighning immune items. This however is very expensive and it would hurt even more to lose them due to other battlefield killing spells.
2) only field scs like his tartarians. This however means the game winner is the one who has the better scs, which is pretty boring.

What was the battle plan of the C'tis army? I can't figure out what was planned. Why were there 40 mages? and longdead archers with faeries? What would happen if somebody RoS-ed that army?

[Turin]

the battle plan was probably to build up mass communions(most of them were c´tis shamans). He had a titan scripted to army of lead vs RoS, the fairys were probably just leftovers from a fairy queen, the archers were there for the banefire effect.

RoS would be a good counter as well as wrathful skies, but it hits only once and his mages had mostly 15-20 hp from the gift of health.

[PvK]

jeffr said:
If some unit/spell (in this case Wrathful Skies) is used by everyone, then it must be more powerful in relation to other units/spells.

Only if you assume everyone makes good choices.
Besides, not everyone uses Wrathful Skies.
Nevertheless, I tend to agree that I'd like to see Wrathful Skies be more difficult to cast, for my own tastes. I think it's a neat spell, but would rather it require a more powerful (and/or more expensively-prepared) mage.

Maybe in Dom3 there would be some way of capturing MP statistics on what spells/units were used the most/least. Over time, this would give a pretty good indication of what needed to be scaled up and what needed to be scaled down.

Well, if it were a program which auto-generated an optional Nerf Du Jour mod to shut up forum whiners, maybe.

PvK