Home Trending Latest threads New posts Developer diaries

My main issue with this game

Jump to latest Follow Reply
  • We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
D

DaCruise

Recruit
1 Badges
Mar 1, 2013
3
0
  • Warlock: Master of the Arcane
Hey all.

I desperatly want to think that this game is good but it really isnt and I feel its a shame cause its quite unique and should have a lot of potential.

Obviously the AI is not perfect and some units and spells could be considered OP but in the end it all boils down to 1 thing: You can ALWAYS talk the AI into peace!

I play only on impossible (impossible to lose) and no matter what settings I choose I win without much effort.
Whenever I meet a rival mage I start dialogue for non-agression pact and the mage always accepts. After that I just stay on top of things and continue to suggest peace options whenever a pact is broken and its a free win basically.
This is completely ruining the game experience for me and prolly for many others as well.

Ofc I could gimp myself and not choose perks, do a 1 city challenge, not initiate dialogue or whatever but that is not how I want to play the game.

After the "random lords appearing out of nowhere" patch, it has gotten even easier and almost completely removed the use of tier 2 units (seasoned goblin spearman, veteran warriors, minotaurs etc).

Does anyone know if there is a mod or cheat out there to drastically increase difficulty?
I want to play and love Warlock: Master of the Arcane but atm I simply cant.
 
There are no mods Im afraid. This was asked for by the community but so far we have received no word from the developer or publisher.

If you want to play a game with more difficulty I suggest you try a few things:
1. Use house rules. There were a good few threads made on this subject. Sure its not ideal, but if you can restrain from making gamey moves then you can enjoy a harder game.
2. Cant recall if there is a AI aggressive options - so drop the difficulty down to the one below Impossible. IIRC this will not make the AI so aggressive.
3. If you havent, get the Armaggedon DLC. The new play mode is much harder to play against, though be warned it changes the base Warlock experience alot.
 
DaCruise said:
Hey all.

I desperatly want to think that this game is good but it really isnt and I feel its a shame cause its quite unique and should have a lot of potential.

Obviously the AI is not perfect and some units and spells could be considered OP but in the end it all boils down to 1 thing: You can ALWAYS talk the AI into peace!

I play only on impossible (impossible to lose) and no matter what settings I choose I win without much effort.
Whenever I meet a rival mage I start dialogue for non-agression pact and the mage always accepts. After that I just stay on top of things and continue to suggest peace options whenever a pact is broken and its a free win basically.
This is completely ruining the game experience for me and prolly for many others as well.

Ofc I could gimp myself and not choose perks, do a 1 city challenge, not initiate dialogue or whatever but that is not how I want to play the game.

After the "random lords appearing out of nowhere" patch, it has gotten even easier and almost completely removed the use of tier 2 units (seasoned goblin spearman, veteran warriors, minotaurs etc).

Does anyone know if there is a mod or cheat out there to drastically increase difficulty?
I want to play and love Warlock: Master of the Arcane but atm I simply cant.
Click to expand...

Well, I had lot of situations where the ai didnt accept a non-agression pact at the beginning or even declared a war to me.
Besides of that, try to play with different map settings. Smaller map gives more aggressivity.
If I am not satisfied with diplomacy, I just dodnt use it, where is a problem?
 
hasbulat said:
Well, I had lot of situations where the ai didnt accept a non-agression pact at the beginning or even declared a war to me.
Besides of that, try to play with different map settings. Smaller map gives more aggressivity.
If I am not satisfied with diplomacy, I just dodnt use it, where is a problem?
Click to expand...

Only in the very early game I´ve had a mage declare war on me and not accepting peace straight away. The longer the game goes, the more powerful you become and mages will give almost anything to prevent a war with you.

I have tried playing on all settings and it makes no difference.

I use diplomacy cause its part of the game just like perks, expanding and such. I dont wanna gimp myself to actually be able to lose on freaking impossible difficulty.
 
So I like the design of the game except for 2 things that almost destroy the enjoyment.

1) In single player the ai, mainly the cheating, the BLATANT cheating, like when you happen to crush another wizard early and you magically see 6 units appear around his last city out of nowhere. The last time I played saw it happen and haven;t played since.

2) In multi player, which get you back to the good game and away from the crappy ai, the lock down from ebing able to even see move around and view your empire and units when its not your turn, just ruins multi player
 
Like in most games, the AI pays less upkeep for units or get economic boni, or perhaps could get extra perks. Those 6 units appearing could have been sent by the AI to go whack some neutral town or monster, then finally manage to whack that monster and than got the order to stop you from razing their cap. Just that you, as a player, would have resent them to the defence much earlier does not mean that the AI would have done so.

For the record, most of the difficulty of the big name Shogun Total War 2 comes from AI getting free armies spawned when you get close to victory, and the most nasty enemy in Medieval total war happened to be the "ready made stack" Mongols and Timurids.

If anything, the AI should cheat more on impossible. I am also open to the AI having vision on the entire map, which iirc makes AI programming a lot easier.
 
Ionan said:
ai shouldn't cheat more, it should simply learn to use tier 3 units. maybe they should get a gift in form of a tier 3 unit every 3turns since turn 100 or so
Click to expand...

In an ideal world sure... thats what we should see. Giving the AI better items or more of them should be resigned to difficulty settings, but its not an ideal world. I expect that game designers are allowed/should be allowed some flexibility in scenario setup but to make strategy games challenging an AI able to play as a player, learn as a player would be preferable!

Any suggestions as to any such strategy games?
 
IIRC Galactic civilisation 2 had a fairly nice AI, although it also cheated on higher settings.

However, the Warlock setting would be a pain to AI optimise for a number of reasons (I am no specialist in AI programming ofc):

1: A fairly tight economy, with upkeep costs being a very significant part of your expense. Very few game AIs can deal well with upkeep costs. In fact, disregarding upkeep costs is one of the main features of a number of "deity" "suicidal" etc. difficulty modes over a wide variety of sub genres. The issue with significant upkeep is that one can have "too many" units, and most AIs try to maximise unit count as much as possible.
2: Wide varietys of damage types. One feature of the SOTS 1 AI is that the AI counts what is damaging it a lot in battles, (For example missles) and then decides "Geee this missles hurt, lets design new ship with point defence since I am hardwired to know that point defense beats missles". One could perhaps do something similiar in Warlock, but since most of the fighting in warlock is vs neutrals, who usually have really variable damage types, one would propably end up with a fairly confused AI.

However, in one game, one AI actually kicked arse, and was very interesting to watch. Launching really large armies (that would have greatly inconvenienced me if launched in my direction) of tier 2 units! What conditions were in place to make this happen? A) The impressive AI was in a fairly rich corner, but didnt have a whole lot of mega fire elemantals to content with. B) It went to war with another AI early C) I had an NAP with it. The impressive AI fieled exclusivly tier 2 units (I think I even saw one unit of ancient trolls, no temple units though), which was propably because the tier 1 units died, and the AI stopped to produce them. The AI on AI war propably also helped with relieving upkeep costs.

May I add another suggestion? Give the AI a large bonus vs neutrals.
 
Downloaded the armageddon dlc and just completed it on impossible. It was a lot harder than normal mode, which is good but now I just dont have any reason to play again whatsoever.
 
Every game ai in existance has loopholes that the player can exploit in their favor should they choose to do so. The resources just aren't available to create an ai for any overly complex game that can plan ahead, react to changing environment by changing the plans, and know when to do so while also being unpredictable.
 
The game is losing players already. PLEASE learn from Civ's experience and understand that modding support is your friend. With the ability to mod we can make this game relevant for years. Dont let it die because of stubborn inability to understand the modern playerbase.

Or at least allow us to mod it without interference. Player made tools were released and forced to be withdrawn, which ranks high in the history of stupid decisions.

Basically interest in this is evaporating. Mods will save it. At least if done now. If you wait until no one is playing it to let us mod it, it will be too late.
 
I agree, I think mods are a must in this game and can make it a more attractive game as a whole. Also a fix to the minor multiplayer issues and this game is set. I see no reason for them not to allow the modding because of the fact atm they do not intend to produce anymore dlc. So give us mod tools and we bring in more players. I would just be satisfied if I could make my own maps for the game. That is the only thing I want a mod.
 
jdxhero said:
I agree, I think mods are a must in this game and can make it a more attractive game as a whole. Also a fix to the minor multiplayer issues and this game is set. I see no reason for them not to allow the modding because of the fact atm they do not intend to produce anymore dlc. So give us mod tools and we bring in more players. I would just be satisfied if I could make my own maps for the game. That is the only thing I want a mod.
Click to expand...

Yeah if the game was moddable, such as unit values and AI routines, the community could get involved in fixing some of these problems and the devs could import some of those fixes if they agree with them into the game for the next patch. At this point I think its just a huge missed opportunity and will never happen unless a sequel is made thats designed from the ground up to involve the community through modding post release.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back