DRAS - Tactical opinion needed!

[Burnsaber]

Firstly DRAS stands for "Difficult Research with Anti-rush Spells". The idea of the soon-to-be mod is to allow for the "difficult" and "very difficult" research settings to be actually used.

You see, hard research grants an very unfair advantage to those powerful nations that really don't need any early research versus the numereous human nations that can't counter rushes without some sorts of magical tricks.

The idea for doing this is to just a provide a nice selection of "anti-rush" spells into very early research leves (like 1 or 2 at max) by lowering the research requirements for excisting spells.

I'm not really that great of a player (more on that later),but it seems to me that there are 3 types of rushes. Note that this list is very generalized, just for the sake of keeping discussion simple.

1) Powerful Sacreds - These guys are not numereous, but provide a nearly indestructible foe in the early game due to high bless and special abilities. Examples: Niefel Giants, Hinnom Giants, Recruitable bless SC's (Jarls, Eagle Kings, Fomoria Kings etc...).

2 Mass Sacreds - Invidually not so though. But with low resource cost and a huge bless, these things will obliterate everything in their path. Examples: Jaqs, Eagle Warriors, Shadow Vestals

3 Special Troops - Big troops that are not necessarily sacred, but can provide a tough nut to crack without easy access to magical counters. Examples: Hydras, Elephants, Mammoths.

Now, it doens't take a rocket scientist to see that these threats need different counters. Tangle Vines really isn't an effective counter to Jaquar Warriors, but might be in some cases to Jarls, for example.

But, back to the point of me being a medicore player at best. I really don't have much idea what works against what, so I made this thread to get opinions on those who have actually faced and perhaps fended off rushes. This is the reason why this is in the main section, to get educated opinions from a wide sprectum of players, not just from the regulars in the mod threads.

The goals of the easier research spells:

A) Give all nations some counters to any of the rush-threaths listed above, preferrably many different ones in order to make counter-countering a but more difficult.

B) Somehow make sure that paths and levels on the anti-rush spells are diverse enough to allow for enough options, no matter what nation you are.

C) Somehow try to make sure that the rush nations cannot get much benefit from these spells, for obvious reasons. This is an obvious problem when trying to come with counter spells against threat 2, the massed sacreds.

D) Keep the changes as global as possible. I really don't see any reason to lower a single spell because a weak nation X (and just nation X) could use it to fend off a rush. If nations X,Y and Z could use it, that's a different thing.


Some ideas to get juices going

Earth: Armor of Achilles - Should work against powerful sacreds.

Nature: Tangle Vines - Duh.

[Sombre]

Could make shadow bolt cheaper to shoot stuff like elephants.

Earth grip/meld also works.

The cloud spells too, sleep, freezing, rust etc - those can all be used in anti rush.

[Frozen Lama]

prison of fire/bonds of fire?

[MaxWilson]

Hmmm. So you want spells for killing SCs and elite troops that are still low-research and don't give an unfair advantage? The only thing I can think of is to make sure these spells cost a lot, so that you won't use them unless you ARE being bless-rushed. Shadow Blast is a good standard I think. It's a good spell, but it involves gem micro and requires multiple mages to get a saturation effect, which in the early game means pretty much only near your capital/main forts.

Thus, you could consider lowering the research level on:

* Shadow Blast (works vs. all kinds of troops, not so much SCs)
* Summon Air Elemental
* Iron Bane (GREAT for killing powerful sacreds)
* Fire Arrows (may be too powerful)
* Swarm
* Dessication

And possibly provide gemcosting, low-research versions of Frozen Heart, Incinerate, Stellar Cascades, Charm, Soul Slay, etc.

-Max

[Frozen Lama]

i actually like that idea. make it so its not worth using unless its using gems or extinction.

[chrispedersen]

Sorry burn..

I absolutely think this is not necessary. There are no shortages to stop any of these situations. There are effective counters to almost everything, as low as research level 2.

Tangle vines
Earth Meld
call horror
dust to dust
bows of botuf
panic/frighten
smite

The problem is *not* that the counters don't exist. Its much more of a rock paper scissors problem - and no amount of modding is going to solve that, until the game becomes - we all play ulm.
(ie., the same nation) -ie., some nations only have counters to *some* tactics.

Even in instances where counters are available, players will not diplomaticize or send scouts to find out whose adjacent. Or upon finding it out they don't take reasonable precautions.

For example - recent game, pangaia cast carrion woods - and then looking at the charts it was demonstrable that the gem income was climing and climbing - whereas research was flat and nonexistent.

That player was site searching for gems. All well and good - but had no counter to Niefle when niefle came a callin.

The vagaries of who you start next to - recognizing what counters to be developed, and holy cow I better grow so niefle choses a different target are part of the charm of the game...

[Burnsaber]

Originally Posted by Sombre

Could make shadow bolt cheaper to shoot stuff like elephants.

Earth grip/meld also works.

The cloud spells too, sleep, freezing, rust etc - those can all be used in anti rush.

Yeah, Sleep Cloud should be good, although it can hit your troops pretty badly too. About Freezing mist and rusting mist, they're crosspath, making them useful just few nations. Freezing Mist is really only usable by LA Atlantis, Caelum and occansionally T'ien C'hi, and in some cases, Caelum is the rushing nation.

Rust mist is really only usable by Agartha, it kinda falls on the "too niche" bracket. The less changes I have to do, the better.

Originally Posted by Frozen Lama

prison of fire/bonds of fire?

Yeah, definately.

Originally Posted by MaxWilson

Hmmm. So you want spells for killing SCs and elite troops that are still low-research and don't give an unfair advantage? The only thing I can think of is to make sure these spells cost a lot, so that you won't use them unless you ARE being bless-rushed. Shadow Blast is a good standard I think. It's a good spell, but it involves gem micro and requires multiple mages to get a saturation effect, which in the early game means pretty much only near your capital/main forts.

Thus, you could consider lowering the research level on:

* Shadow Blast (works vs. all kinds of troops, not so much SCs)
* Summon Air Elemental
* Iron Bane (GREAT for killing powerful sacreds)
* Fire Arrows (may be too powerful)
* Swarm
* Dessication

And possibly provide gemcosting, low-research versions of Frozen Heart, Incinerate, Stellar Cascades, Charm, Soul Slay, etc.

-Max

Hmm. Very good idea, thinking outside the box. I was pretty solid on my intention to not to include any new spells, but a gemcosting Frozen Heart or Stellar Cascades would be good, I have to admit. I probably could replace the absolutely 0% use spells with these kinds of spells (Freezing Touch, Healing Touch.. etc)

Shadow Blast also sounds like a good idea.

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

Sorry burn..

I absolutely think this is not necessary. There are no shortages to stop any of these situations. There are effective counters to almost everything, as low as research level 2.

But the problem is that with difficult research, reaching that last straw in evocation 2 takes 160 research points. Very difficult research and we are talking about over 200 research points. Even if you manage to find out who your neighbour is (with your starting scout), say, turn 5, it will take precious time reach that spell before the end of year one. And even them, we talking about a single trick. Once the rusher finds solution that, you're screwed, since it will take at least 4 turns to reach another trick. Remember that most nations can't manage both good research and good expansion.

As for your example on the Panganea player, yeah, that's not too bright. But unless the game was difficult research I fail to see how it is relevant to this case.

[Illuminated One]

Being able to fend of a rush isn't the only problem that the weak nations have.
You will also need spells to make your troops effective against normal troops (indies, PD), so you end up with a much smaller empire and not in the position to overrun anyone (while the rush nation will find someone unless you make the counters really overpowered).
And honestly playing 30 turns just researching counters while your strategy looks like "archers in a big blob fire whatever, infantry in three small blobs hold and attack" isn't very funny imo.
If you want to keep it as simple as possible just give weak nations x points they can spend on research however they like before the game starts via map modding.

[Sombre]

That last suggestion doesn't sound massively simple.

Also I think Burn is trying to come up with a mod that can be used in all DR games.

Could provide every nation with an early research boost pretty easily. Have them all start with a strong researcher unit that slowly gets worse as the game goes on (using firstshape commands). That way you can rush a couple of levels of research early, then you get stuck into real DR.

[Mardagg]

Seriously,in Dom2 u couldnt afford to buy a mage every turn.
Thus the research was much slower AND i liked it.
By making Dom 3 larger scale battles and not increasing the research cost for standard games,Illwinter did increase the pace of the game by making the earlier game and mid game shorter,since the high level spells are reached easier,which i dont like.

Sure,it wasnt possible to imprison/sleep the pretender to gain easier access to bless strategies...but common,if you invest in bless strat u wont have awake SC pretender.I cant see the problem here.
People playing with good scales+ imprisoned rainbow site search pretender are the only ones having problems vs bless rushes imo,since every one else either has good combat pretender or bless strat ,too.If you go for good scales and bad combat pretender you simply are advised to do it with a nation only,that has strong initial troops.Otherwise u are making a big mistake in MP games anyways be it Normal research or difficult research.
There always have been enough counters vs early rushes in DOM 2 and there always will be enough counters in DOM 3 .

By "rebalancing" the spells for difficult research games other things become unbalanced.Leave it as it is,there is no need to change anything imo.
Yes to difficult research,No to mod.